“Can it not? Are you so very sure?” One upward appealing glance she flashed him as she asked the question. “As I am sure that out of your sweet charity you deceive yourself,” he answered. “Do I? Let us say that I did. But if you say that I still do, then you are overlooking something. I am no longer in your debt. I have paid it in another and a fuller way. As you saved my life, so have I since saved yours. I thanked God for the merciful chance to do this, since by doing it I could wipe out this debt that seemed to stand between us. We are quits now, Randal. I no longer owe you anything. I have repaid you; therefore I am no longer under any necessity to be grateful. You cannot deny that.” “I would not if I could.” “Then, don’t you see? Without indebtedness between us, no longer under any obligation to you, I have given you my forgiveness freely, frankly, and fully. Your offence, after all, was not really against me....” “It was, it was,” he interrupted fiercely. “It was against you inasmuch as it was against my own honour. It made me unworthy.” “Even so, you had my complete forgiveness from the moment that I came to know how cruelly you had been driven. Indeed, I think that I forgave you earlier, much earlier. My heart told me--my senses told me when you attempted to rescue me from the Duke of Buckingham--that some such tale of misfortune must lie behind your deed.” A little flush came to stain the pallor which his illness had left upon his cheeks. He bowed his head. “I bless you for those words. They will give me courage to face ... whatever may await me. I shall treasure the memory of them, and of your sweetness always.” “But still you do not believe me!” she cried out. “Still you think that behind it all there are some dregs of ... of ... resentment in my heart!” “No, no, Nan. I believe you.” “And yet you will persist in going?” “What else? You who know all now must see that there is no place for me in England.” There was a ready answer leaping to her lips. But she could not utter it. At least, not yet. So again she hung her head, and again there fell a pause, in which she was desperately seeking for another line of attack upon his obstinately proud humility. Arguments to reason failing her, she availed herself of an argument to sentiment. She drew from the bodice of her gown a rubbed and faded tasselled glove. She held it out to him, looking up at him, and he saw that her eyes were wet. “Here is something that belongs to you, at least. Take it, Randal. Take it, since it is all that you will have of me.” Almost in hesitancy he took that little glove, still warm and fragrant from sweet contact with her, and retained also the hand that proffered it. “It ... it shall again be a talisman,” he said softly, “to keep me worthy as ... as it did not keep me once.” Then he bowed over the hand he held, and pressed it to his lips. “Good-bye, and God guard you ever, Nan.”