I could have laughed aloud. It was too ridiculous, this situation into which I had got myself. I did not know what to say. I could hardly keep out of my face how foolish this collapse of my crafty conspiracy made me feel. And then the full meaning of what she was doing came over me--the revelation of her character. I trusted myself to steal a glance at her; and for the first time I didn't see the thrilling azure sheen over her smooth white skin, though all her beauty was before me, as dazzling as when it compelled me to resolve to win her. No; I saw her, herself--the woman within. I had known from the outset that there was an altar of love within my temple of passion. I think that was my first real visit to it. “Anita!” I said unsteadily. “Anita!” The color flamed in her cheeks; we were silent for a long time. “You--your people owe me nothing” I at length found voice to say. “Even if they did, I couldn't and wouldn't take _your_ money. But, believe me, they owe me nothing.” “You can not mislead me,” she answered. “When they asked me to become engaged to you, they told me about it.” I had forgotten. The whole repulsive, rotten business came back to me. And, changed man that I had become in the last six months, I saw myself as I had been. I felt that she was looking at me, was reading the degrading confession in my telltale features. “I will tell you the whole truth,” said I. “I did use your father's and your brother's debts to me as a means of getting _to_ you. But, before God, Anita, I swear I was honest with you when I said to you I never hoped or wished to win you in that way!” “I believe you,” she replied, and her tone and expression made my heart leap with indescribable joy. Love is sometimes most unwise in his use of the reins he puts on passion. Instead of acting as impulse commanded, I said clumsily, “And I am very different to-day from what I was last spring.” It never occurred to me how she might interpret those words. “I know,” she replied. She waited several seconds before adding: “I, too, have changed. I see that I was far more guilty than you. There is no excuse for me. I was badly brought up, as you used to say, but--” “No--no,” I began to protest. She cut me short with a sad: “You need not be polite and spare my feelings. Let's not talk of it. Let us go back to the object I had in coming for you to-day.” “You owe me nothing,” I repeated. “Your brother and your father settled long ago. I lost nothing through them. And I've learned that if I had never known you, Roebuck and Langdon would still have attacked me.” “What my uncle gave me has been transferred to you,” said she, woman fashion, not hearing what she did not care to heed. “I can't make you accept it; but there it is, and there it stays.” “I can not take it,” said I. “If you insist on leaving it in my name, I shall simply return it to your uncle.” “I wrote him what I had done,” she rejoined. “His answer came yesterday. He approves it.”