He glanced at her again, inscrutable, unfathomable things in that gaze. "Ah, youth, youth and the waste of it!" There were tones in his voice that brought the tears to her eyes, but he did not see them. He was musing on the accident of her life, this flower of the dust, which he had taken from the dingy environment she loathed. He had lavished all the beauty and experience within his power upon her, and taken away perhaps the one thing that had redeemed her life. He had seen only the limitations and the makeshifts and how they had oppressed her dainty and fastidious spirit; but it had never struck him before that in lifting her away from them, above them, he had taken from her the one thing that might have glorified her life, that the sordidness and the scrimpiness were for her for ever haunted by the unexpected. That because she was young and beautiful and free, the dreariness must have been irradiated always by the rainbow tints of romance; and he had given her all the beauty and glitter his money could buy in exchange for the joy of a dream, and fancied that he had actually done something for her. "Dita, forgive me," he murmured, a curiously bitter smile about his mouth. "Forgive you!" she looked at him a little cautiously. She didn't understand the workings of his mind. He never gave her a hint either in eyes or expression that would seem as a clue for her to follow. "Yes. You should." Again he smiled at her. "You didn't get a fair exchange. I see that very plainly now." "You must not speak like that," she said quickly. "Believe me, it was a great deal more than a fair exchange and I have always regarded it so. Why do you think I have not been happy?" "Because you have never really loved me." "But I--I have always liked you," she cried quickly. "But," forlornly, "you knew the truth at the time. Even if I had not, I should have had to marry you anyway. I was so deep in debt I couldn't help it. I could not manage any more than I can speak Sanscrit. So you see that there is nothing to forgive. Believe me, I am always grateful, for before I married you, I thought and thought, but I could see no other way." He laughed again. He couldn't help it. He had a sense of humor and he seemed to see, in a flashlight of vision, shocked Romance gather up her skirts and shake the dust of Dita's threshold from her winged shoes. "You are so really fearless and honest, Dita, that I venture to ask the question." He put it with a rather diffident gentleness. "You have found it quite impossible to care for me?" "Oh, no," impulsively. "I have always liked you. I am really very fond of you. But I am always tongue-tied before you. I never can think of anything to say to you and I always say foolish things." She regarded him with a wistful timidity. He laughed ruefully. It was sorry mirth. "That is a proof of my stupidity, my child, not yours."