"All that I gave him. I was no miser. The day came in which I repented my generosity. I suffered when he turned from me; but jealousy I felt none. Perhaps I was to blame for not recovering my pride at once. But through my love he had taught me that it is bitter indeed to love in vain." She was silent. Her features hardened, and a deep furrow was graven in her smooth forehead. "And then," her voice continued; "then came the moment of that terrible revelation. I do not know how I bore it. I was struck as by a lightning-flash; I was shattered. I wanted to leave him; but my people at home would not consent, and I--I could not tell him. Unresisting I let them do with me what they would. I would lie like a corpse, without movement or sensation; then I would rave, needing the most careful watching. And he--he came to me again, as the culmination of his misdeeds. I had become changed for him, more desirable. But I spat in his face. He came crawling and begging to me on his knees, and I struck him in the face and spurned him." She raised her clenched hand to her brow, and shook it as against an invisible enemy. Her eyes glowed with resentment, and her breath came pantingly. Then again the unnaturally excited bearing relaxed; she sank gently down on the couch, and bent over her lover, who hid his face in the silk of her gown. "Beloved," she whispered, in an infinitely softened tone; "it was then, just when I had recovered from my delirium, that you returned. When I saw you again, here in this room, it was borne in on me that we belonged to each other, and I thought you must feel as I did." Reimers looked up at her, and made a movement to seize her hand. "I know now that I already loved you," he said, "but I fought against it, because I feared unhappiness for you." Hannah gently shook her head. "Do not speak of unhappiness, beloved," she exhorted him. "Do I not love you, and do you not love me? Are we not happy?" She stooped to him, and pressed her lips to his in a long kiss. "I could not see clearly through my dreadful doubts," she went on. "What could I be to you--impure, defiled, ruined? There was only in me the longing that you should love me. What was the mad intoxication of my girlish folly to the happiness that possessed me when I became certain that you did love me? I could have denied you nothing, dearest. How happy I was!" She smiled softly to herself, sunk in tender recollection, and Reimers felt her light hand touch his hair gently with a caressing motion. He grasped that fair hand and kissed it reverently.