"Because I wanted you to love me?"
"No, Sir; because I do love you, and you bring me only wretchedness. I have never been happy since the miserable day I first saw you."
"Then, Ivy, I have utterly failed in what it has been my constant endeavor to do."
"No, Sir, you have succeeded in what you endeavored to do. You have taught me. You have given me knowledge and thought, and showed me the source of knowledge. But I had better have been the ignorant girl you found me. You have taken from me what I can never find again. I have made a bitter exchange. I was ignorant and stupid, I know,—but I was happy and contented; and now I am wretched and miserable and wicked. You have come between me and my home and my father and mother;—between me and all the bliss of my past and all my hope for the future."
"And thus, Ivy, have you come between me and my past and my future;—yet not thus. You shut out from my heart all the sorrow and vexation and strife that have clouded my life, and fill it with your own dear presence. You come between me and my future, because, in looking forward, I see only you. I should have known better. There is a gulf between us; but if I could make you happy"—
"I don't want you to make me happy. I know there is a gulf between us. I saw it while you were gone. I measured it and fathomed it. I shall not leap across. Stay you on your side quietly; I shall stay as quietly on mine."
"It is too late for that, Ivy,—too late now. But you are not to blame, my child. Little sunbeam that you are, I will not cloud you. Go shine upon other lives as you have shone upon mine! light up other hearths as you have mine! and I will bless you forever, though mine be left desolate."
He turned away with an expression on his face that Ivy could not read. Her passion was gone. She hesitated a moment, then went to his side and laid her hand softly on his arm. There was a strange moistened gleam in his eyes as he turned them upon her.
"Mr. Clerron, I do not understand you."
"My dear, you never can understand me."