“Ah, Margaret, you would have me accuse myself--and I do. The crime is mine! I have done you this wrong---” She interrupted him. “No, Alfred Stevens, _I_ have done wrong! I FEEL that I have done wrong. That I have been feeble and criminal, _I_ KNOW. I will not be so base as to deny what I can not but feel. As for your crime, you know best what it is. I know mine. I know that my passions are evil and presumptuous; and though I blush to confess their force, it is yet due to the truth that I should do so, though I sink into the earth with my shame. But neither your self-reproaches nor my confession will acquit us. Is there nothing, Alfred Stevens, that can be done? Must I fall before you, here, amidst the woods which have witnessed my shame, and implore you to save me? I do! Behold me! I am at your feet--my face is in the dust. Oh! Alfred Stevens--when I called your eyes to watch, in the day of my pride, the strong-winged eagle of our hills, did I look as now? Save me from this shame! save me! For, though I have no reproaches, yet God knows, when we looked on that eagle's flight together, my soul had no such taint as fills it now. Whatever were my faults, my follies, my weaknesses, Heaven knows, I felt not, feared not this! a thought--a dream of such a passion, then--never came to my bosom. From you it came! You put it there! You woke up the slumbering emotion--you--but no!--I will not accuse you! I will only implore you to save me! Can it be done? can you do it--will you--will you not?” “Rise, dearest Margaret--let me lift you!” She had thrown herself upon the earth, and she clung to it. “No, no! your words may lift me, Alfred Stevens, when your hands can not. If you speak a hope, a promise of safety, it will need no other help to make me rise! If you do not!--I would not wish to rise again. Speak! let me hear, even as I am, what my doom shall be? The pride which has made me fall shall be reconciled to my abasement.” “Margaret, this despair is idle. There is no need for it. Do I not tell you that there is no danger?” “Why did you speak of ruin?” she demanded. “I know not--the word escaped me. There is no ruin. I will save you. I am yours--yours only. Believe me, I will do you right. I regard you as sacredly my wife as if the rites of the church had so decreed it.” “I dare not disbelieve you, Alfred! I have no hope else. Your words lift me! Oh! Alfred Stevens, you did not mean the word, but how true it was; what a wreck, what a ruin do I feel myself now--what a wreck have I become!” “A wreck, a ruin! no, Margaret, no! never were you more beautiful than at this very moment. These large, sad eyes--these long, dark lashes seem intended to bear the weight of tears. These cheeks are something paler than their wont, but not less beautiful, and these lips--” He would have pressed them with his own--he would have taken her into his arms, but she repulsed him.