"Have you never known of love being turned to hate?"
"No. Other impulses may be, but not love. Love can no more turn to hate than sunlight can turn to darkness. Believe me, Dave, if you hate Irene now you never loved her. Listen:
"'Love beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things!'"
"Not all things, Edith; not all things."
"It says all things."
Dave was silent for some time. When he spoke again she caught a different sound in his voice; a tone as though his soul in those few moments had gone through a life-time of experience.
"Edith," he said, "when you repeated those words I knew you had something that I have not. I knew it, not by the words, but by the way you said them. You made me feel that you were not setting a higher standard for me than you would accept for yourself. You made me know that in your own life, if you loved, you would be ready to endure all things. Tell me, Edith, how may this thing be done?"
She trembled with delight at the new tone in his voice, for she knew that in that hour Dave had crossed a boundary of his life and entered into a new and richer field of existence. She knew that for him life would never again be the empty, flippant, selfish, irresponsible thing which in the past he had called life. He was already beginning to taste of that wine of compensation provided for those who pass through the valley of sorrow.
"In your case," she said, "the course is simple. It is just a case of forgiving."
He gazed for a time into the street, while thoughts of bitterness and revenge fought for domination of his mind. "Edith," he said at length, "must I—forgive?"