“Have you forgiven me now?”

“It is not true that I did not forgive you,” she replied, looking up at his face again.  “There has never been in my heart for a single moment any sense of a wrong which I could not pardon.  It has been one of the awful mysteries of this experience that I could not feel that wrong!  When I tried to feel it most, my heart would say to me, ’you are not sorry that he loved you, Pepeeta!  You would rather that all this agony should have befallen you than that he should not have loved you at all!’ It is this feeling that has bewildered me, David.  Explain it to me.  Let me know how I could have such feelings in my heart and yet be good.  It seems as if I ought to hate you; but I cannot.  I love you, love you, love you.”

“But, Pepeeta, if you loved me, why did you leave me?  I do not comprehend.  How could you let me stand in the darkness under your window and then turn away from it into the awful blackness and solitude to which I fled?”

“Do not reproach me, I thought it was my duty, David.”

“I do not reproach you.  I only want to know your inmost heart.”

“I do not know!  There has been all the time something stronger than myself impelling me.  I grew too weak to reason.  I felt that the heart had reasons of its own, too deep for the mind to fathom, and I yielded to them.  I was only a woman after all, David.  Love is stronger than woman!  Oh! it was I who wronged you.  I ought not to have forsaken you.  Ought I?  I do not know, even now.  Who can tell me what is right?  Who can lead me out of this frightful labyrinth?  If I did wrong in seeking you, I humbly ask the pardon of God, and if I did wrong in abandoning you, I ask forgiveness in all lowliness and meekness from the man I wronged.”

“No, Pepeeta, you have never wronged me; I alone have been to blame.  The result could not have been really different, no matter what course you took.  The scourge would have fallen anyway!  All that has happened has been inevitable.  Justice had to be vindicated.  If it had not come in one way, it would in another, for there are no short cuts and evasions in tragedies like this!  Every result that is attached to these causes must be drawn up by them like the links in a chain, and one never knows when the end has come.”

His solemn manner and earnest words alarmed Pepeeta.

“Oh, David,” she cried, “it cannot, cannot be so awful.  Such consequences cannot hang upon the deeds we commit in the limitations and ignorance of this earthly life.”

“Forgive me, Pepeeta, I should not talk so.  These are the fears of my darker moments.  I have brighter thoughts and hopes.  There is a quiet feeling in my heart about the future that grows with the passing days.  God is good, and he will give us strength to meet whatever comes.  We must live, and while we live we will hope for the best.  Life is a gift, and it is our duty to enjoy it.”

“Oh! it is good to hear you say that!  It comforts me.  I think it cannot be possible that we should not be able to escape from this darkness if we are willing to follow the divine light.”