"You spoke the truth. Only we had not been telling each other the truth before." "No. And we must stop it. We shall learn the truth fast enough. We need not make whips of it to lash each other with. Come here." "I can't," said Esmée in a choking whisper. "Yes, you can. You shall forgive me." She shook her head. "That is not the question. You did not do it. I did not do it. God has done it--as you said." "Did I say that? Did I presume to preach to you?" "If I have done what you say--if I have cut you off from all human relations, and made your house worse than a den of thieves and murderers, how can anything be too bad for me to hear? What does it matter from whom I hear it?" "I was beside myself. I was drunk with sorrow and fatigue." "That is when people speak the truth, they say. I don't blame you, Jack. How should I? But you know it can never be the same, after this, with you or with me." "Esmée," said Jack, after a long and bitter silence, holding out his shaking hand, "will you come with me in there, and look at him? He knows the truth--the whole truth. If you can see in his face anything like scorn or reproach, anything but peace,--peace beyond all conception,--then I will agree that we part this day, forever. Will you come?" "Oh, Jack, you _are_ beside yourself, now. Do you think that I would go in there, in the presence of _that_ peace, and call on it for my justification, and begin this thing again? I should expect that peace would come to me--the peace of instant death--for such awful presumption." "I didn't mean that--not to excuse ourselves; only to bring back the trust that was between us. Does this bitterness cure the past? Have we not hurt each other enough already?" "I think so. It is sufficient for me. But men, they say, get over such things, and their lives go on, and they take their places as before. I want you to"-- "There is nothing for me--will you believe it?--more than there is for you. Will you not do me that much justice, not to treat this one passion of my life as--what shall I say? It is not possible that you can think such things. We must make up to each other for what we have each cost the other. Come. Let us go and stand beside him--you and I, before the others get here. It will do us good. Then we will follow him out, on his way home, as far as we can; and if there is any one in town who has an account with me, he can settle it there and then. Perhaps my mother will have both her sons shipped home to her on the same train." Jack had not miscounted on the effect of these words. They broke down Esmée's purer resolution with their human appeal. Yet he was not altogether selfish. He held out his hand to her. She took it, and they went together, shrinkingly, into the presence of the dead. When they came out, the eyes of both were wet.