“Katharine,” he said, at last, “don’t think me hard and unfeeling. You managed to hurt me pretty badly, that’s all. Just when I was down, you turned your back on me, and I cared. I suppose that if I didn’t love you, I shouldn’t have cared at all, or not so much. Shouldn’t you think it strange if I’d been perfectly indifferent, and if I were to say to you now--‘Oh, never mind--it’s all right--it wasn’t anything’? It seems to me that would just show that I’d never loved you, and that I had acted like a blackguard in marrying you yesterday morning. Wouldn’t it?” Katharine looked at him, and a gleam of hope came into her eyes. She nodded twice in silence, with close-set lips, waiting to hear what more he would say. “I don’t like to talk of forgiveness and that sort of thing between you and me, either,” he continued. “I don’t think it’s a question of forgiveness. You’re not a child, and I’m not your father. I can’t exactly forgive--in that sense. I never knew precisely what the word meant, anyhow. They say ‘forgive and forget’--but if forgiving an injury isn’t forgetting it, what is it? Love bears, but doesn’t need to forgive, it seems to me. The forgiveness consists in the bearing. Well, you don’t mean to make me bear anything more, do you?” A smile came into his face, not a very gentle one, but nevertheless a smile. Katharine’s hand went out quickly and touched his own. “No, dear, never,” she said simply. “Well--don’t. Perhaps I couldn’t bear much more just now. You see, I’ve loved you very much.” “Don’t say it as though it were past, Jack,” said Katharine, softly. “No--I was thinking of the past, that’s all.” He paused a moment. His heart was beating a little faster now, and tender words were not so far from his lips as they had been five minutes earlier. He could be silent and still be cold. But she had made him feel that she loved him dearly, and her voice waked the music in his own as he spoke. “It was because I loved you so, that I felt it all,” he said. “A little more than you thought I could--dear.” It was he, now, who put out his hand and touched a fold of her gown which was near him, as she had touched his arm. The tears came back to Katharine’s eyes suddenly and unexpectedly, but they did not burn as they had burned before. “I’ve never loved any one else,” he continued presently. “Yes--and I know you’ve not. But I’m older, and I know men who have been in love--what they call being in love--twice and three times at my age. I’ve not. I’ve never cared for any one but you, and I don’t want to. I’ve been a failure in a good many ways, but I shan’t be in that one way. I shall always love you--just the same.” Katharine caught happily at the three little words. “Just the same--as though all this had never happened, Jack?” she asked, bending towards him, and looking into his brown eyes. “If you’ll say that again, dear, I shall be quite happy.” “Yes--in a way--just the same,” answered Ralston, as though weighing his words.