"No," she returned slowly, the words falling from her lips as the thoughts took definite shape in her mind, "it is best as it is. I am sincere at this moment, when I say to you that I regret nothing--nothing. If I had not learned what it is to suffer, I should not know how to love you as I do. I see now that it has all been a preparation--for this. If I had gone to you then, I,--we--I think we might not have been so happy. I was too ignorant, I was too hurt and suspicious to appreciate--And I had no real understanding of love. First I had thought it was romance, sentiment,--then I thought I knew it to be passion,--afterwards I thought it must be affection, friendship, esteem. Now I know." "What is it then?" he asked. "I don't know that I can explain in words, it is all I have said and more too, it is the feeling I have for you; it is all myself, the essence of my soul, the best that is in me." There was a short silence, and she continued, "I said before that I had grown hard and cynical, but I know now that it is not true. Pain has purified me, and I feel, I know--" she drew herself up proudly and turned her face to his, "that I am infinitely more worthy of your love than I was five years ago,--than I was even before Prince Mirko--I was nothing but a silly, vain girl, then, now I am a woman; I know what life is and what I give you I give consciously, in the full knowledge of what it is, of what it means to you, to me, to our life. Yes, I am a better woman." "Dear!" said Angelescu and his eyes adored her. He knew that she spoke the truth, that the harsh discipline had unconsciously prepared her for this glorious bursting into bloom, as the cold rains and snows of winter prepare the earth for the flowering of spring, still in his heart of hearts, manlike, he could not help wishing that she might have been his without having been subjected to the bitterness of life. He wished that he might have claimed her, young, innocent, unsuspicious of the evil in the world; he thought that without any experience of the darker side of existence, his love and the happiness she would have found in it, would have sufficed to bring her nature to its perfection of flowering. Unconsciously he resented any influence but his own in the development of the woman he loved. This was his instinct, his reason told him that Ragna was right, and he was thankful, nay, consummately happy, that she should come to him at last, by whatever road, and above all that she should thus surrender herself to him, fully, unreservedly and consciously.