She turned still farther away. "Do you require everything to be explained?" she asked, in a voice just audible. He hesitated. Then he answered, "I beg your pardon. I require nothing." She seemed to be waiting that she might have herself more under control. At last she said, "I deserve that you should speak in that way to me." Lawrence thrust his hands into the pockets of his loose coat. He could shut them fast there and no one would see them. "Deserve?" he repeated. "I don't understand." "Yes, you must understand." The words were spoken softly and tremulously; but the head was still averted. Prudence now went on hurriedly, as if she could not speak fast enough, and as if she were saying something that had long been in her mind to be spoken. "It must be right to tell you how I've suffered for my--my mistake--I could almost call it crime--of two years ago. I--I--oh, I have suffered!" The voice ceased, and the speaker covered her face with her hands. Lawrence felt his heart growing hot with the sudden access of crowding emotions. He gave the girl one look, which took in the graceful, well-remembered figure, as if it were then and there being stamped afresh on his mind. "Before you married and were happy with the woman you love," Prudence now went on, quickly, "I wanted you to say you forgave me." "I forgive you," he said, promptly, and with unnecessary distinctness. Prudence raised her head. Her face was wet, her eyes large and full of light. "I didn't mean to make a scene," she said, still more hurriedly. "I know you don't like scenes, and I don't like them myself. But I didn't expect ever to see you alone again, and, happening to meet you, I had to tell you that I couldn't live if you didn't forgive me. You do?" "Yes." "Give me your hand upon it." Lawrence drew a hand from his pocket, and extended it, grasping closely the hand Prudence placed in it. "It's a strong hand and true," she said, smiling; "Carolyn will be happy. And she deserves to be." Prudence withdrew her hand immediately. The two sat in silence, both gazing straight ahead with a look in their eyes as if they saw nothing. "You will be so much happier with Caro than you would have been with me." Prudence spoke quite cheerfully. "I don't suppose I would have been anything like a model wife, and Caro will be. She'll be always wanting you to be comfortable; while I--I shouldn't have been so thoughtful, I'm afraid; I should only have just--" She stopped abruptly. Lawrence, with his face still straight ahead, repeated: "Only have just--" "Loved you,"--in a tone so penetrating and so sweet that the man who heard it looked like a stone man, in that he made no visible response. She went on directly, in a matter-of-fact way, "I mean, you know, if things had gone on as we once planned." "If you had not jilted me." "Yes." She hesitated, and then said, "But you just told me that you forgave me." "So I do."