“Will you please tell me just what you mean when you say I have spoiled your life?” he asked.

“How should I know?  How should anyone know till he has lived out its bitterness?  What do you mean by the words?  Perhaps you will remember hereafter that your language has been inconsistent as well as merciless.  You said I was neither brainless nor heartless; then added that you had spoiled my life merely for one evening.  But there is no use in trying to defend myself:  I should have little to urge except thoughtlessness, custom, the absence of evil intention,—­other words should prove myself a fool, to avoid being a criminal.  Go on and spoil your life; you seem to be wholly bent upon it.  Face rebel bullets or do some other reckless thing.  I only wish to give you the solace of knowing that you have made me as miserable as a girl can be, and that too at a moment when I was awakening to better things.  But I am wasting your valuable time.  You believe in your heart that Mr. Strahan can console me with his gossip to-morrow evening, whatever happens.”

“Great God! what am I to believe?”

She turned slowly towards him and said, gravely:  “Do not use that name, Mr. Lane.  He recognizes the possibility of good in the weakest and most unworthy of His creatures.  He never denounces those who admit their sin and would turn from it.”

He sprung to her side and took her hand.  “Look at me,” he pleaded.

His face was so lined and eloquent with suffering that her own lip quivered.

“Mr. Lane,” she said, “I have wronged you.  I am very sorry now.  I’ve been sorry ever since I began to think—­since you last called.  I wish you could forgive me.  I think it would be better for us both if you could forgive me.”

He sunk into a chair and burying his face in his hands groaned aloud; then, in bitter soliloquy, said:  “O God!  I was right—­I knew I was not deceived.  She is just the woman I believed her to be.  Oh, this is worse than death!”

No tears came into his eyes, but a convulsive shudder ran through his frame like that of a man who recoils from the worst blow of fate.

“Reproach—­strike me, even,” she cried.  “Anything is better than this.  Oh, that I could—­but how can I?  Oh, what an unutterable fool I have been!  If your love is so strong, it should also be a little generous.  As a woman I appeal to you.”

He rose at once and said:  “Forgive me; I fear that I have been almost insane,—­that I have much to atone for.”

“O Mr. Lane, I entreat you to forgive me.  I did admire you; I was proud of your preference,—­proud that one so highly thought of and coveted by others should single me out.  I never dreamt that my vanity and thoughtlessness could lead to this.  If you had been ill or in trouble, you would have had my honest sympathy, and few could have sacrificed more to aid you.  I never harbored one thought of cold-blooded malice.  Why must I be punished