“Yes, I do; for I must tell her how it all was, and she will understand better than most people would, the straits to which I have been driven! She knows Marcel and she knows me, and, moreover, she would have considered it a mortal sin for me to have married my Uncle Marcel. I will go and get out my writing materials, and commence the letter at once,” she exclaimed, rolling up her embroidery and rising to leave the room; but looking up, she met the eyes of the young man fixed on her, and full of the disappointment and sorrow that he could not always banish from them. “Oh, David Lindsay, can you ever forgive me for the great wrong I have done you?” she cried, dropping into her chair again and covering her face with both hands. He did not say that there was nothing to forgive; that no wrong had been done him; he could not speak so falsely even to soothe her whom he loved so fondly and so unselfishly. He had been asked to marry her, and then had been rejected at the altar. He had been deprived of his liberty, and then bitterly disappointed and humiliated. This was a deep wrong, and he felt it very acutely. He could not soothe her by any smooth denial that it was so, yet neither did he reproach her even in his thoughts. When she dropped her hands upon her lap, revealing her tear-stained face and repeated her question: “Oh, David Lindsay, can you ever, ever forgive me, for the great wrong I have done you?” his heart melted with tenderness towards her, he knelt by her side, took her limp hands in his own, looked up in her woeful little face—his own fine face full of the heavenly light of self-renunciation, and said: “Whatever there may be to forgive, dearest, I forgive with all my heart and soul. I love you too deeply and truly to feel a shade of anger towards you. Never, even in my thoughts, have I blamed you.” “Oh, you are so good and great-hearted, David Lindsay! And I have, in my impulsive selfishness, so spoiled your life! Married you and then refused to be your wife, and put it out of your power to wed any other woman!” she cried, weeping bitterly. “No, Gloria, no, dear, do not reproach yourself with that last consequence, for it is not true. I love you only, and have loved you only all the days of my life. I could not, and cannot change. So even if I had not married you I could never have married any other woman. Put that cause of self-reproach out of your mind, Gloria.” She was crying so convulsively that she could not speak for some time. When she could, her hands clasped his, and she sobbed forth: “And I love you, David Lindsay! Oh, I do! I do! I do! I do love you, so dearly! You feel so near to me, David Lindsay; just like my own heart and soul; but I don’t want to be married! That is, I know I am married, but I don’t want to be!” He made no sort of reply to this tirade.