"Ah, grand! I reverence your faith. But she is a woman! She loved you and expected you that hour, I say. Thus comes the shock of finding you untrue, of finding you at least a common man, after all. She is a woman. 'Tis the same fight, all the centuries, after all! Well, I did that." "You ruined the lives of two, neither of whom had ever harmed you, Madam." "What is it to the tree which consumes another tree--the flower which devours its neighbor? Was it not life?" "You had never seen Elisabeth." "Not until the next morning, no. Then I thought still on what you had said. I envied her--I say, I coveted the happiness of you both. What had the world ever given me? What had I done--what had I been--what could I ever be? Your messenger came back with the slipper. The note was in the shoe untouched. Your messenger had not found it, either. See, I _did_ mean it for you alone. But now since sudden thought came to me. I tucked it back and sent your drunken friend away with it for her--where I knew it would be found! I did not know what would be the result. I was only desperate over what life had done to me. I wanted to get _out_--out into a wider and brighter world." "Ah, Madam, and was so mean a key as this to open that world for you? Now we all three wander, outside that world." "No, it opened no new world for me," she said. "I was not meant for that. But at least, I only acted as I have been treated all my life. I knew no better then." "I had not thought any one capable of that," said I. "Ah, but I repented on the instant! I repented before night came. In the twilight I got upon my knees and prayed that all my plan might go wrong--if I could call it plan. 'Now,' I said, as the hour approached, 'they are before the priest; they stand there--she in white, perhaps; he tall and grave. Their hands are clasped each in that of the other. They are saying those tremendous words which may perhaps mean so much.' Thus I ran on to myself. I say I followed you through the hour of that ceremony. I swore with her vows, I pledged with her pledge, promised with her promise. Yes, yes--yes, though I prayed that, after all, I might lose, that I might pay back; that I might some time have opportunity to atone for my own wickedness! Ah! I was only a woman. The strongest of women are weak sometimes. "Well, then, my friend, I have paid. I thank God that I failed then to make another wretched as myself. It was only I who again was wretched. Ah! is there no little pity in your heart for me, after all?--who succeeded only to fail so miserably?" But again I could only turn away to ponder.