“That's a dear sensible girl. How sweet it is to hear that 'Mary' from your lips again! How often I have wished to hear it!--the wish has even made me cry. For I have never ceased to think of you and love you, Fan, even when I was determined never to speak to you again. But let me explain something. Though you disobeyed me, Fan, and spoke so lightly about it, just as if you believed that you could do what you liked with me, I still might have overlooked it if it had not been for my brother Tom's interference. I was very much offended with you, and when we spoke of you I said that I intended giving you up, but I don't think I really meant it in my heart. But he put himself into a passion about it, and abused me, and called me a demon, and dared me to do what I threatened, and said that if I did he would never speak to me again. That settled it at once. To be talked to in that way by anyone--even by Tom--is more than my flesh and blood can stand. And so we parted--it was at Ravenna, an old Italian city--and of course I did what I said, and from that day to this we have not exchanged a line, nor ever shall until he apologises for his words. That's how it happened, and what woman with any self-respect--would not _you_ have acted in the same way, Fan, in such a case?” “No, Mary, I don't think so. But we are so different, you so strong and I so weak.” “Are you really weak? I am not so sure. You have taken me captive, at all events.” And then her eyes suddenly growing misty again, she continued: “Fan, you have a strength which I never had, which, in the old days when you lived with me, used to remind me of Longfellow's little poem about a meek-eyed maid going through life with a lily in her hand, one touch of which even gates of brass could not withstand. You will forgive me, I know, but tell me now from your heart, don't you think it was cruel--wicked of me to receive you as I did just now?” “You wouldn't have been so hard with me, Mary, if you had known what I felt. All day long I have been thinking of you, and wishing--oh, how I wished to see you again! And before coming here to see Dawson Place once more I went and sat down on that very seat in Kensington Gardens where you found me crying by myself on that day--do you remember?--and where--and where--oh, how I cried again only to think of it! How could I speak to you as I did--in that horrible way--when you had loved me so much!” “Hush, Fan, for heaven's sake! You make me feel as if you had put your hand down into me and had wound all the strings of my heart round your fingers, and--I can't bear it. I think nothing of what you said in your anger, but only of my cruelty to you then and on other occasions. Oh, do let's speak of something else. Look, there is your card on the floor where I dropped it. Why do you call yourself Miss Eden--how do you come to be so well-dressed, and looking more like some delicately-nurtured patrician's daughter than a poor girl? Do tell me your story now.”