“Why, nothing, so far as the past is to be reviewed for you and me.  Yet, I should say that, if there were two here speaking as you and I, and if they two had no such past as we—­then I could fancy that woman saying to her friend, ‘Have you indeed done all that lay within you to do?’”

“Is it not enough—?”

“There is nothing, sir, that is enough for a woman, but all!”

“I have given you all.”

“All that you have left—­after yourself.”

“Sharp, sharp indeed are your words, my Lady.  And they are most sharp because they come with justice.”

“Oh,” broke out the woman, “one may use sharp words who has been scorned for her own false friend!  You would give me all, Mr. Law, but you must remember that it is only what remains after that—­that—­”

“But would you, could you, have cared had there been no ‘that’?  Had I done all that lay in me to do, could you then have given me your confidence, and could you have thought me worthy of it?”

“Oh, ‘if!’”

“Yes, ‘if!’ ‘If,’ and ‘as though,’ and ’in that case’—­these are all we have to console us in this life.  But, sweet one—­”

“Sir, such words I have forbidden,” said Lady Catharine, the blood for one cause or another mounting again into her cheek.

“You torture me!” broke out Law.

“As much as you have me?  Is it so much as that, Mr. Law?”

He rose and stood apart, his head falling in despair.  “As I have done this thing, so may God punish me!” said he.  “I was not fit, and am not.  Yet I was bold enough to hope that there could be some atonement, some thing—­if my suffering—­”

“There are things, Mr. Law, for which no suffering atones.  But why cause suffering longer for us both?  You come again and again.  Could you not leave me for a time untroubled?”

“How can I?” blazed the man, his forehead furrowed up into a frown, the moist beads on his brow proving his own intentness.  “I can not!  I can not!  That is all I know.  Ask me not why.  I can not; that is all.”

“Sir,” said Lady Catharine, “this seems to me no less than terrible.”

“It is indeed no less than terrible.  Yet I must come and come again, bound some day to be heard, not for what I am, but for what I might be.  ’Tis not justice I would have, dear heart, but mercy, a woman’s mercy!”

“And you would bully me to agree with you, as I said, in regard to your own excellent code of morals, Mr. Law?”

“You evade, like any woman, but if you will, even have it so.  At least there is to be this battle between us all our lives.  I will be loved, Lady Catharine!  I must be loved by you!  Look in my heart.  Search beneath this man that you and others see.  Find me my own fellow, that other self better than I, who cries out always thus.  Look!  ’Tis not for me as I am.  No man deserves aught for himself.  But find in my heart, Lady Catharine, that other self, the man I might have been!  Dear heart, I beseech you, look!”