“I am no saint,” said Beatrice, coldly. “I do not find forgiveness in such abundance as you need.”
“You will find it for me. You are not bad, as I am, but you can understand what I have done, nevertheless, for you know what you yourself would do for the sake of him we love. No—do not be angry with me yet—I love him and I tell you so—that you may understand.”
“At that price, I would rather not have the understanding. I do not care to hear you say it. It is not good to hear.”
“Yet, if I did not love him as I do, I should not be here, of my own free will, to take you to him. I came for that.”
“I do not believe you,” Beatrice answered in tones like ice.
“And yet you will, and very soon. Whether you forgive or not—that is another matter. I cannot ask it. God knows how much easier it would have been to die than to come here. But if I were dead you might never have found him, nor he you, though you are so very near together. Do you think it is easier for me to come to you, whom he loves, than it is for you to hear me say I love him, when I come to give him to you? If you had found it all, not as it is, but otherwise—if you had found that in these years he had known me and loved me, as he once loved you, if he turned from you coldly and bid you forget him, because he would be happy with me, and because he had utterly forgotten you—would it be easy for you to give him up?”
“He loved me then—he loves me still,” Beatrice said. “It is another case.”
“A much more bitter case. Even then you would have the memory of his love, which I can never have—in true reality, though I have much to remember, in his dreams of you.”
Beatrice started a little, and her brow grew dark and angry.
“Then you have tried to get what was not yours by your bad powers!” she cried. “And you have made him sleep—and dream—what?”