She looked at him somewhat timidly.
“You are generous indeed,” she said.
“I am no whit more than just. You were absolutely warranted in such a course toward me. What I long to do—what I have crossed the world in the hope of doing—is to get you to forgive yourself, to free yourself of a hallucination which is casting a needless shadow on your life.”
“Oh, you are good—good!” she said. “I never knew so kind a heart. Therefore must my unending misery be the greater that I have once wounded it.”
“That consciousness should have no sting for you hereafter. You did it in utter ignorance. I cannot claim that I was half so ignorant in my wrong toward you. But surely we may remember that we have once been friends, and so we may feel that there is full and free forgiveness between us before we part.”
She did not speak. That last word had pierced too deeply to her heart.
“You do forgive me—do you not?” he said, as if he misunderstood her silence.
“I thank you—I bless you—I seek your forgiveness,” she said.
At these last words he smiled—a smile that had a certain bitterness in it. Then suddenly his face became rigidly grave.