"Guida," he said with rushing emotion, "it is not too late. Forgive the past-the wrong of it, the shame of it. You are my wife; nothing can undo that. The other woman--she is nothing to me. If we part and never meet again she will suffer no more than she suffers to go on with me. She has never loved me, nor I her. Ambition did it all, and of ambition God knows I have had enough! Let me proclaim our marriage, let me come back to you. Then, happen what will, for the rest of our lives I will try to atone for the wrong I did you. I want you, I want our child. I want to win your love again. I can't wipe out what I have done, but I can put you right before the world, I can prove to you that I set you above place and ambition. If you shrink from doing it for me, do it"--he glanced towards the bed--"do it for our child. To-morrow--to-morrow it shall be, if you will forgive. To-morrow let us start again--Guida--Guida!" She did not answer at once; but at last she said "Giving up place and ambition would prove nothing now. It is easy to repent when our pleasures have palled. I told you in a letter four years ago that your protests came too late. They are always too late. With a nature like yours nothing is sure or lasting. Everything changes with the mood. It is different with me: I speak only what I truly mean. Believe me, for I tell you the truth, you are a man that a woman could forget but could never forgive. As a prince you are much better than as a plain man, for princes may do what other men may not. It is their way to take all and give nothing. You should have been born a prince, then all your actions would have seemed natural. Yet now you must remain a prince, for what you got at such a price to others you must pay for. You say you would come down from your high place, you would give up your worldly honours, for me. What madness! You are not the kind of man with whom a woman could trust herself in the troubles and changes of life. Laying all else aside, if I would have had naught of your honours and your duchy long ago, do you think I would now share a disgrace from which you could never rise? For in my heart I feel that this remorse is but caprice. It is to-day; it may not--will not--be tomorrow." "You are wrong, you are wrong. I am honest with you now," he broke in.