“You’ve a right to my forbearance, and not only that, but to my—­my life; to everything that I am,” cried Dan, in a quiver of tenderness at the sight of her and the sound of her voice.  “Alice, why did you write me that letter?—­why did you send me back my ring?”

“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?”

“You neglected them on Class Day after you saw me.”

“Why, of course I did.  How could I help it?”

A flush of pleasure came into the girl’s pale face; but she banished it, and continued gravely, “Then at Portland you were with them all day.”

“You’d given me up—­you’d thrown me over, Alice,” he pleaded.

“I know that; I don’t blame you.  But you made them believe that you were very much interested in them.”

“I don’t know what I did.  I was perfectly desperate.”

“Yes; it was my fault.  And then, when they came to meet you at the Museum, I had made you forget them; I’d made you wound them and insult them again.  No.  I’ve thought it all out, and we never could be happy.  Don’t think that I do it from any resentful motive.”

“Alice? how could I think that?—­Of you!”

“I have tried—­prayed—­to be purified from that, and I believe that I have been.”

“You never had a selfish thought.”

“And I have come to see that you were perfectly right in what you did last night.  At first I was wounded.”

“Oh, did I wound you, Alice?” he grieved.

“But afterward I could see that you belonged to them, and not me, and—­and I give you up to them.  Yes, freely, fully.”

Alice stood there, beautiful, pathetic, austere; and Dan had halted in the spot to which he had advanced, when her eye forbade him to approach nearer.  He did not mean to joke, and it was in despair that he cried out:  “But which, Alice?  There are two of them.”