"Are you asking me to tell you what I should do in your wife's place, Mr. Le Roy?" she asked him in a low, strange voice.
"Yes, put yourself in her place," he replied. "Tell me, could you forgive me and love me again after the coldness with which I put my wife from me that night?"
"I do not believe I could ever forget or forgive such unkindness," she replied.
He looked at her keenly, with a brooding trouble in his eyes.
"Perhaps you do not look at the subject quite as my young wife would have done," he said, anxiously. "Laurel loved me, Mrs. Lynn. Do not forget that. Would she not forgive me for love's sweet sake?"
"No, I do not think she would. Her pride would be stronger than her love," answered the beautiful woman.
"Laurel was not proud," said St. Leon Le Roy.
"Not when you loved her, not when she was happy," said Mrs. Lynn. "But can you not fancy the sweetness of even such a nature as hers turned to gall by wrong and ruth? I repeat it, Mr. Le Roy, if I were in your Laurel's place, if I could come back after all those years, I believe I should be as proud and cold as I was gentle once, I do not believe I could forgive you!"
He sprung up, he held out his arms to her yearningly, his face transfigured by the yearning passion of his heart.
"Laurel, Laurel, do not speak to me so cruelly, do not judge me so hardly!" he cried. "Do you think I do not know you, my darling?—that I have not known you since the moment we met again? That senseless marble lies when it says my wife is dead! You are she, you are Laurel Le Roy!"