"Yes. I understand what you want, and I will do it. Tell me one thing, however. Some day Leonora will join you?"
"I have faith that it is not impossible," he said, rising as he spoke. "Good-bye, Mrs. Mortomley. God bless you." And without thought he put out his hand.
Then Dolly drew back, flushing crimson. "I do this for your wife, Mr. Werner," she said, "not for you. I cannot forget."
"You can forgive though, I hope," he pleaded. "Mrs. Mortomley, I wish before we part you would say, 'I forgive you, and I hope God will.' It is not a long sentence."
"It is a hard one," she answered; "so hard that I cannot say it."
"For my wife's sake?"
"One cannot forgive for the sake of a third person, however dear."
"Do you remember how you wished, or said you should wish, but for her, that I might be beggared and ruined—beggared more completely, ruined more utterly than you had been? The words have never died out of my memory."
"Did I say so?" Dolly asked, a little shocked, as people are sometimes apt to be, at the sound of their own hot words repeated in cold blood. "I have no doubt," she went on, "that I meant every syllable at the time, but I ought not to have meant it—I am sure I should not wish my worst enemy to pass through all we have been compelled to endure."
"In that case it will be the easier for you to shake hands and say we part friends."