"I have just been talking with your mother," he said, as they shook hands. "She told me I should probably find you on the sands."
"Oh, then you came to find me?" said Juliet naïvely. "I never thought of seeing you, for I did not know you were here."
"I came to take the Sunday services at Ainsdale," he replied; "it was arranged when I was there before. I am going away to-morrow. I wanted so much to see you before I went."
"It seemed very strange that you should appear," said Juliet, "for just before I turned and saw you, I had been thinking of that evening when we met at Lynton. Do you remember?"
"When we met upon the cliffs—that grand path along the cliffs? Surely I remember it. The scenery there is very different from this."
"Very; and yet the quiet sea, the sunset hues, the sinking sun brought it all back to me. You did your best to warn me that night, Mr. Mainprice, but it was of no use. I had to learn my own folly by bitter experience. Is it always so? Can no one get wisdom but at such a price? I suppose not, when they are as wilful as I was."
"We most of us, I think, need to suffer ere we become conscious of sin," said Mr. Mainprice; "and we often learn to count as our greatest blessings the pains which first roused us to a sense of danger, and showed us the perilous path we were treading."
"Do you mean that I should be thankful that I have so marred my life?" Juliet asked bitterly.
"Your life is not marred," he said quickly. "I will not allow you to say it. You may surely be thankful for the pain that has tended to correct and purify your character. Juliet,—let me call you so,—it seems to me that your thoughts on this subject are growing morbid. You believe that God has forgiven you the errors of the past. Can you not forgive yourself?"
"I might," said Juliet, in a low voice, "it might be possible to forgive, if I could ever forget."