conscience of an eavesdropper and a spy; yet all I knew was sacred to me." _Constance_, turning and looking steadfastly into his face.--"And you could care for so poor a creature as I--so abject, so obtuse as never to know what had made her intolerable to the man that cast her off?" _Bartlett._--"Man? He was _no_ man! He"-- _Constance_, suddenly.--"Oh, wait! I--I love him yet." _Bartlett_, dropping her hand.--"You"-- _Constance._--"Yes, yes! As much as I live, I love him! But when he left me, I seemed to die; and now it's as if I were some wretched ghost clinging for all existence to the thought of my lost happiness. If that slips from me, then I cease to be." _Bartlett._--"Why, this is still your dream. But I won't despair. You'll wake yet, and care for me: I know you will." _Constance_, tenderly.--"Oh, I'm not dreaming now. I know that you are not he. You are everything that is kind and good; and some day you will be very happy." _Bartlett_, desolately.--"I shall never be happy without your love." After a pause: "It will be a barren, bitter comfort, but let me have it if you can: if _I_ had met you first, could you have loved _me_?" _Constance._--"I might have loved you if--I had--lived." She turns from him again, and moves softly toward the door; his hollow voice arrests her. _Bartlett._--"If you are dead, then I have lived too long. Your loss takes the smile out of life for me." A moment later: "You are cruel, Constance." _Constance_, abruptly facing him.--"I cruel? To _you_?" _Bartlett._--"Yes, you have put me to shame before myself. You might have spared me! A treacherous villain is false in time to save you from a life of betrayal, and you say your heart is dead. But that isn't enough. You tell me that you cannot care for me because you love that treacherous villain still. That's my disgrace, that's my humiliation, that's my killing shame. I could have borne all else. You might have cast me off however you would, driven me away with any scorn, whipped me from you with the sharpest rebuke that such presumption as mine could merit; but to drag a decent man's self-respect through such mire as that poor rascal's memory for six long weeks, and then tell him that you prefer the mire"-- _Constance._--"Oh, hush! I can't let you reproach him! He was pitilessly false to me, but I will be true to him for ever. How do I know--I _must_ find some reason for that, or there is no reason in anything!--how do I know that he did not break his word to me at my father's bidding? My father never liked him." _Bartlett_, shaking his head with a melancholy smile.--"Ah, Constance, do you think _I_ would break my word to you at your father's bidding?" _Constance_, in abject despair.--"Well, then I go back to what I always knew; I was too slight, too foolish, too tiresome for his life-long love. He saw it in time, I don't blame him. You would see it, too."