"I particularly bound him not to do so; but I did write more than once, and got his answers. In that way it came to me that you were unhappy--courageously and unselfishly, yet profoundly so, and it was not difficult for me to comprehend the reason. You will forgive me for going into a dead and buried issue for this once; but I knew your nature, and it was obvious to me that you were torturing yourself because you felt that you had done a wrong to me." Bettina caught her breath suddenly, and covered her face with her hands. "Is it not so?" he said. But she could not speak. The shrinking anguish of her whole attitude was her only answer. Then he took the seat nearest her, and said: "It is with the hope of lifting this totally unnecessary burden from your mind that I have come. I beg you to have patience with me while I speak to you quite simply and tell you why you would be doing wrong to blame yourself on my account. For this once I must ask you to let me speak of the past--not the recent past--let us consider that in its grave forever--but the remote past, in which for a short while I had a share. I, too, have my confession to make and pardon to beg, for I am conscious that I wronged you, though it was through ignorance, youth, inexperience, and also--forgive me for mentioning it, but it is my best justification--also because I loved you, with a love which I was then too ignorant even to comprehend. I needs must beg you to remember that, in owning my great wrong to you. This wrong," he continued, after an instant's pause, "consisted in my urging you to marry me when you did not love me. I feared it was so, even then; but I was selfish; I thought of myself and not of you. When the whispered misgiving would rise up in my mind I forced it down by vowing that if you did not already love me I could and would make you do so. When the blow fell, and I knew that I had lost you, I knew that my selfishness in thinking chiefly of my own happiness had been properly rewarded. At least this was the feeling that possessed my heart after the first. You were young, confiding, inexperienced. I knew better than you possibly could know that you did not love me. Later, you knew it also." He waited, as if for her response. From behind her close-pressed hands the answer came. "Yes," she said, lowly, "I have long known that it was a mistake on my part. You are right. I did not love you." Had she been looking, she would have seen a shadow cross his face--a very faint one, as the hope that it obscured had been faint also. "Therefore," he said, "I took advantage of you, and obtained from you a promise which I should never have asked. I want you to feel that I realize the wrong I did you in that, and ask your forgiveness for it." Slowly she lowered her hands and looked at him. "And you can ask forgiveness of me?" she said. "I humbly beg it--as on my knees." "Then what should be my attitude to you?"