"No more did I, until this morning!" he answers, eagerly; "this morning—at the last moment—young Parker asked me to come down with him—and I—I knew we must meet sooner or later—that it could not be put off forever, and so I thought we might as well get over it here as anywhere else!"
Neither of us has thought of sitting down. He is speaking with rapid, low emotion, and I stand stupidly listening.
"I suppose so," I answer lazily. I cannot for the life of me help it, friends. I am back in Brindley Wood. He has come a few steps nearer me. His voice is always low, but now it is almost a whisper in which he is so rapidly, pantingly speaking.
"I shall most likely not have another opportunity, probably we shall not be alone again, and I must hear, I must know—have you forgiven me?"
As he speaks, the recollection of all the ill he has done me, of my lost self-respect, my alienated Roger, my faded life, pass before my mind.
"That I have not!" reply I, looking full at him, and speaking with a distinct and heavy emphasis of resentment and aversion, "and, by God's help, I never will!"
"You will not!" he cries, starting back with an expression of the utmost anger and discomfiture. "You will not! you will carry vengeance for one mad minute through a whole life! It is impossible! impossible! if you are so unforgiving, how do you expect God to forgive you your sins?"
I shrug my shoulders with a sort of despairing contempt. God has seemed to me but dim of late.
"He may forgive them or leave them unforgiven as He sees best; but—I will never forgive you!"
"What!" he cries, his face growing even more ash-white than it was before, and his voice quivering with a passionate anger; "not for Barbara's sake?"