"It was a mistake. I did not satisfy him. He thought me cold. We quarrelled, and he went to other women. He drank a great deal. I was much to blame, but I could not help it. I hated him. Then his uncle took my part and loved me--God bless him, he was a saint--and kind--oh, so kind. When he died he left me the money, and his nephew and I separated. I have not seen him since." They were both silent. She could hear his heavy breathing, and her heart throbbed. "It was all a mistake," she said. "My whole life has been a mistake. But there is no salvation for us who make mistakes." His eyes grew dark as he looked at her. "A mistake that one stands by may become the part of wisdom," he said. "Could you not go back to him and begin again?" His face had grown haggard. Her wrath flamed out. "If I begin again," she answered, "it must be from the beginning--to relive my whole life." He looked at her restless hands. "Then you must look to the future," he said, "since there is no present--and no past." "There is a past," she returned, passionately. He shook his head. "A dead one." Her mouth shone scarlet in the pallor of her face. "And shall we forget our dead?" she asked. His lips closed together with brutal force. His eyes were hot with self-control. Then he stooped for her muff, which had rolled to the ground, brushing it lightly with his hand. As he gave it to her he rose to his feet. "Shall we return?" he asked. "It has grown cloudy." She rose also, but stood for an instant with her hand resting upon the back of the bench. Her lips opened, but closed again, and she turned and walked at his side in silence. Suddenly he looked at her. "It is late," he said, "as you doubtless know, and I have neglected a call. May I leave you to go on alone?" Then his voice softened. "Are you ill?" he asked--"or in pain?" She laughed mirthlessly. "You are too strong," she returned, "to stoop to irony." "It was not irony," he answered, gently. She smiled sadly, her eyes raised. "Tell me that you will come to see me--once," she said. He looked at her with sudden tenderness. "Yes," he answered; "I will come. Good-bye!" "Good-bye!" And they went different ways. CHAPTER X Mariana went home with throbs of elation in her heart. She was thrilled with a strange, unreasoning joy--a sense of wonder and of mystery--that caused her pulses to quiver and her feet to hasten. "I shall see him again," she thought--"I shall see him again." She forgot the years of separation, her past indifference, the barriers between them. She forgot the coldness of his voice and his accusing glance. Her nature had leaped suddenly into fulness, and a storm of passion such as she had never known had seized her. The emotions of her girlhood seemed to her stale and bloodless beside the tempest which possessed her now. As she walked her lips trembled, and she thought, "I shall see him again."