“How wicked of me—how utterly wicked!”
“Why, Barbe, child?”
“Don’t speak to me, John. To think that I should give thought to such things when all this is over you—over us both!”
He went to her, putting an arm about her shoulders, touched her hands gently with his lips.
“Weep not, dear heart, if it be wrong that you should have these pretty stuffs, it is I who am to blame for loving you.”
She let her hands fall and looked up through a mist of tears into his face.
“John, can we—can you ever forget the past? Can you forgive?”
“What have I to forgive, dear heart?”
“Ah yes; but—”
He held her at arm’s-length, his two hands upon her shoulders, and looked into her eyes.