Commonly it is the woman on whom the remembrance of love has an enthralling power when love itself is traitor; commonly it is the man on whom the past has little influence, and to whom its appeal is vainly made; but here the position was reversed. He would have pleaded by it; she refused to acknowledge it, and remained as adamant before it. His nerve was too broken, his conscience was too heavily weighted, for him to attempt to rebel against her decisions or sway her judgment. If she had bidden him go out and slay himself he would gladly have obeyed.
"Once you said," he murmured timidly, "that repentance washes out all crimes. Will you count my remorse as nothing?"
"You would have known no remorse had your secret never been discovered!"
He shrank as from a blow.
"That is not true," he said wearily. "But how can I hope you will believe me?"
She answered nothing.
"Once you told me that there was no sin you would not pardon me!" he muttered.
She replied:
"We pardon sin; we do not pardon baseness."
She paused and put her hand to her heart; then she spoke again in that cold, forced, measured voice, which seemed on his ear as hard and pitiless as the strokes of an iron hammer, beating life out beneath it.