Bartlett.—"Then if you pity me, give me a little hope that sometime, somehow"—
Constance.—"Oh, I have no hope, for you, for me, for any one. Good-bye, good, kind friend! Try,—you won't have to try hard—to forget me. Unless some miracle should happen to show me that it was all his fault and none of mine, we are parting now for ever. It has been a strange dream, and nothing is so strange as that it should be ending so. Are you the ghost or I, I wonder! It confuses me as it did at first; but if you are he, or only you— Ah, don't look at me so, or I must believe he has never left me, and implore you to stay!"
Bartlett, quietly.—"Thanks. I would not stay a moment longer in his disguise, if you begged me on your knees. I shall always love you, Constance, but if the world is wide enough, please Heaven, I will never see you again. There are some things dearer to me than your presence. No, I won't take your hand; it can't heal the hurt your words have made, and nothing can help me, now I know from your own lips that but for my likeness to him I should never have been anything to you. Good-bye!"
Constance.—"Oh!" She sinks with a long cry into the arm-chair beside the table, and drops her head into her arms upon it. At the door toward which he turns Bartlett meets General Wyatt, and a moment later Mrs. Wyatt enters by the other. Bartlett recoils under the concentrated reproach and inquiry of their gaze.
V.
General Wyatt, Mrs. Wyatt, Constance, and Bartlett.
Mrs. Wyatt, hastening to bow herself over Constance's fallen head.—"Oh, what is it, Constance?" As Constance makes no reply, she lifts her eyes again to Bartlett's face.
General Wyatt, peremptorily.—"Well, sir!"