She dropped her hands, and looked at him with great painful eyes. “Tell me—do you think that a woman can never be forgiven? Do you think that she is soiled, degraded, changed utterly? Do you think that when she—that when she did what she did—it was a sin, a crime, not only a terrible mistake, and that her whole nature is changed? Most people think so. They think that a mark has been left upon her, branded upon her; that she can never, never be the same again. Do you think so, Will? Oh, it is not true; I know it is not true. A woman can leave that mistake, that terror, that horror—she can leave it behind her as completely as she can leave any other dreadful thing. She can blot it out of her life, like a nightmare. She isn’t changed—she remains the same woman. She isn’t utterly changed, and soiled, and defiled. In her own conscience, no matter what other people think, she knows, she knows she isn’t. When she wakes up to find that the man she had believed in, the man she had loved, when she wakes up to find that he isn’t in any way what she had thought him, that he is base and evil and ignoble, and when all her love for him dies in horror and misery—oh, do you think that she must never, never, as long as she lives, hold up her head again, never be happy again, never love any one again? Look at me, Will. I am myself. I am what God made me. Do you think that I am utterly vile because—because———” But her voice failed again, and her eyes again filled with tears. “Oh, Johannah, don’t ask me what I think of you. I could not tell you what I think of you. You are as God made you. God never made—never made any one else so splendid.” And in a moment his arms were round her, and she was weeping her heart out on his shoulder. ROOMS Would Madame like a little orange-flower water in her milk?” the waiter asked. Madame thought she would, and the waiter went off to fetch it.