Constance, uncovering her face and turning its desolation upon him: "My love? I have no love to give. My heart is dead."
Bartlett.—"No, no! That's part of the ugly trance that we've both been living in so long. Look! You're better now than when you came here; you're stronger, braver, more beautiful. My angel, you're turned a woman again! Oh, you can love me if you will; and you will! Look at me, darling!" He takes her listless right hand in his left, and gently draws her toward him.
Constance, starting away.—"You're wrong; you're all wrong! You don't understand; you don't know— Oh, listen to me!"
Bartlett, still holding her cold hand fast.—"Yes, a thousand years. But you must tell me first that I may love you. That first!"
Constance.—"No! That never! And since you speak to me of love, listen to what it's my right you should hear."
Bartlett, releasing her.—"I don't care to hear. Nothing can ever change me. But if you bid me, I will go!"
Constance.—"You shall not go now till you know what despised and hated and forsaken thing you've offered your love to."
Bartlett, beseechingly.—"Constance, let me go while I can forgive myself. Nothing you can say will make me love you less; remember that; but I implore you to spare yourself. Don't speak, my love."
Constance.—"Spare myself? Not speak? Not speak what has been on my tongue and heart and brain, a burning fire, so long?— Oh, I was a happy girl once! The days were not long enough for my happiness; I woke at night to think of it. I was proud in my happiness and believed myself, poor fool, one to favour those I smiled on; and I had my vain and crazy dreams of being the happiness of some one who should come to ask for—what you ask now. Some one came. At first I didn't care for him, but he knew how to make me. He knew how to make my thoughts of him part of my happiness and pride and vanity till he was all in all, and I had no wish, no hope, no life but him; and then he—left me!" She buries her face in her hands again, and breaks into a low, piteous sobbing.