Beth belonged to the kind of people who are always silent in emergencies, so she only looked at her with her great tender eyes, in which there was no trace of resentment.
"I came between you and Clarence Mayfair. He never loved me. It was only a fancy. I amused and interested him, I suppose. That was all. He is true to you in the depths of his heart, Beth. It was my fault—all my fault. He never loved me. It was you he loved, but I encouraged him. It was wrong, I know."
Something seemed to choke her for a moment.
"Will you forgive me, Beth? Can you ever forgive?"
She was leaning forward gracefully, her fur cape falling back from her shoulders and her dark eyes full of tears.
Beth threw both arms about her old friend tenderly, forgetting all the bitter thoughts she had once had.
"Oh, Marie, dear, I love you—I love you still. Of course I forgive you."
Then Beth told her all the story of the past, and of that night when she had learned that Clarence did not love her, of her wounded vanity, her mistaken belief in the genuineness of her own love for him, and her gradual awakening to the fact that it was not love after all.
"Then it wasn't Mr. Grafton at all who made the trouble?" interrupted Marie.
"Mr. Grafton? Why, no! What could he have to do with it?"