Bartlett, desolately.—"I shall never be happy without your love." After a pause: "It will be a barren, bitter comfort, but let me have it if you can: if I had met you first, could you have loved me?"
Constance.—"I might have loved you if—I had—lived." She turns from him again, and moves softly toward the door; his hollow voice arrests her.
Bartlett.—"If you are dead, then I have lived too long. Your loss takes the smile out of life for me." A moment later: "You are cruel, Constance."
Constance, abruptly facing him.—"I cruel? To you?"
Bartlett.—"Yes, you have put me to shame before myself. You might have spared me! A treacherous villain is false in time to save you from a life of betrayal, and you say your heart is dead. But that isn't enough. You tell me that you cannot care for me because you love that treacherous villain still. That's my disgrace, that's my humiliation, that's my killing shame. I could have borne all else. You might have cast me off however you would, driven me away with any scorn, whipped me from you with the sharpest rebuke that such presumption as mine could merit; but to drag a decent man's self-respect through such mire as that poor rascal's memory for six long weeks, and then tell him that you prefer the mire"—
Constance.—"Oh, hush! I can't let you reproach him! He was pitilessly false to me, but I will be true to him for ever. How do I know—I must find some reason for that, or there is no reason in anything!—how do I know that he did not break his word to me at my father's bidding? My father never liked him."
Bartlett, shaking his head with a melancholy smile.—"Ah, Constance, do you think I would break my word to you at your father's bidding?"
Constance, in abject despair.—"Well, then I go back to what I always knew; I was too slight, too foolish, too tiresome for his life-long love. He saw it in time, I don't blame him. You would see it, too."
Bartlett.—"What devil's vantage enabled that infernal scoundrel to blight your spirit with his treason? Constance, is this my last answer?"
Constance.—"Yes, go! I am so sorry for you,—sorrier than I ever thought I could be for anything again."