Her sad eyes almost smiled at him. "I have nothing to forgive thee," she said. "It was but a foolish fancy that I had. Well that it should be broken--ended that;" and she looked again across the dark bracken, her arms extended upon her knees in that desolate pose. It wrung him with pity--his dear Ima! "But tell me!" he pressed her, anxious to soothe her. "Tell me what you mean by fancy--by saying 'ended that!'" She answered: "That all I had tried should be broken suddenly--suddenly as a star falls. I had not minded if I had been warned." "What have you tried, Ima?--I want to know--to show you how sorry I am." She was silent for a considerable space. When she began to speak she spoke without pause, without modulations of her low tone, without notice of the stammered exclamations that her words broke from him. "Hear me, then," she said. "The thing is no more mine--thou mayst know it. To what shall I go back for when I first knew that I loved thee?--" "_Ima!_" "Why, from the first I knew it and began to try to fit me for thee. Why went I to shut myself in roofs and walls, to learn hard books and gentle ways and how to speak in thy fashion?--so thou shouldst not scorn me, so I might make me to be seemly in thy sight--" "_Ima! I never dreamt--!_" "--Why have I gone my ways so--winter by winter leaving my father's van? Because I loved thee since I first saw thee--" "Don't! Don't!" he cried. There was something completely terrible to him in this avowal from a woman--immodest, shameful, horrible--that must cause her violation of her most sacred feelings as they would be violated were she thrust naked before him; that caused him agony for her suffering, and agony that he should see it, as he would endure agony for her and for himself if made to see her nudity. "Don't, Ima! Don't! I understand--I see everything now. I ought to have known!" But she went on--it might have been some requiem she made to some poor treasured thing now dead in her extended arms. She went on: "Because I loved thee--ah, worshipped all thy doings, all thy looks--loved thee with all the love that men and women love--as mothers love, as lovers love, as friends love, as brothers love,--there is no love but I have loved thee with it, and I have thought them all and loved thee with each one the better to enjoy my love--" "_Ima!_" "--Why cried I 'this to happen!' Because by thy kiss I saw that I was nothing to thee--and less than nothing. All my poor trying suddenly proved of no avail. All my poor fancy that haply thou mightst turn to me if I could be worthy of thee suddenly gone to dust that the winds sport. Why cried I 'ended that!'--"