“Because,” she said, looking him seriously in the face—“because I wished you to be free, to be happy.”
“Well, you've gone the wrong way about it. I can never be free from you; I never can be happy without you.”
“I did it for your good, then, which ought to be above your happiness. Don't think I acted hastily. I thought it over all night long. I didn't sleep—”
“Neither did I,” interposed Dan.
“And I saw that I had no claim to you; that you never could be truly happy with me—”
“I'll take the chances,” he interrupted. “Alice, you don't suppose I cared for those women any more than the ground under your feet, do you? I don't suppose I should ever have given them a second thought if you hadn't seemed to feel so badly about my neglecting them; and I thought you'd be pleased to have me try to make it up to them if I could.”
“I know your motive was good—the noblest. Don't think that I did you injustice, or that I was vexed because you went away with them.”
“You sent me.”
“Yes; and now I give you up to them altogether. It was a mistake, a crime, for me to think we could be anything to each other when our love began with a wrong to some one else.”
“With a wrong to some one else?”