“And yet you will, and very soon.  Whether you forgive or not—­that is another matter.  I cannot ask it.  God knows how much easier it would have been to die than to come here.  But if I were dead you might never have found him, nor he you, though you are so very near together.  Do you think it is easier for me to come to you, whom he loves, than it is for you to hear me say I love him, when I come to give him to you?  If you had found it all, not as it is, but otherwise—­if you had found that in these years he had known me and loved me, as he once loved you, if he turned from you coldly and bid you forget him, because he would be happy with me, and because he had utterly forgotten you—­would it be easy for you to give him up?”

“He loved me then—­he loves me still,” Beatrice said.  “It is another case.”

“A much more bitter case.  Even then you would have the memory of his love, which I can never have—­in true reality, though I have much to remember, in his dreams of you.”

Beatrice started a little, and her brow grew dark and angry.

“Then you have tried to get what was not yours by your bad powers!” she cried.  “And you have made him sleep—­and dream—­what?”

“Of you.”

“And he talked of love?”

“Of love for you.”

“To you?”

“To me.”

“And dreamed that you were I?  That too?”

“That I was you.”

“Is there more to tell?” Beatrice asked, growing white.  “He kissed you in that dream of his—­do not tell me he did that—­no, tell me—­tell me all!”

“He kissed the thing he saw, believing the lips yours.”

“More—­more—­is it not done yet?  Can you sting again?  What else?”

“Nothing—­save that last night I tried to kill you, body and soul.”

“And why did you not kill me?”

“Because you woke.  Then the nun saved you.  If she had not come, you would have slept again, and slept for ever.  And I would have let his dreams last, and made it last—­for him, I should have been the only Beatrice.”

“You have done all this, and you ask me to forgive you?”

“I ask nothing.  If you will not go to him, I will bring him to you—­”

Beatrice turned away and walked across the room.

“Loved her,” she said aloud, “and talked to her of love, and kissed—­” She stopped suddenly.  Then she came back again with swift steps and grasped Unorna’s arm fiercely.

“Tell me more still—­this dream has lasted long—­you are man and wife!”

“We might have been.  He would still have thought me you, for months and years.  He would have had me take from his finger that ring you put there.  I tried—­I tell you the whole truth—­but I could not.  I saw you there beside me and you held my hand.  I broke away and left him.”

“Left him of your free will?”

“I could not lie again.  It was too much.  He would have broken a promise if I had stayed.  I love him—­so I left him.”