"Why should it be anything?" she exclaimed. "How can you dare to remind me of what we used to be? 'Forget'?--yes, I have prayed to forget! To forget I was ever foolish enough to believe in you; to forget I was ever debased enough to like you. I wish I _could_ forget it; it's my punishment to remember. Not because I sinned--bad as it is, that's less--but because I sinned for _you_! If all the world knew what I had done, nobody could despise me for it as I despise myself, or understand how I despise myself. The only person who should is you, for you know what sort of man I did it for!" "I was carried away by a temptation--by ambition. You make me out as vile as if it had been all deliberately planned. After you had gone----" "After I had gone you married your manageress. If you had been in love with her, even, I could make excuses for you; but you weren't--you were in love only with yourself. You deserted a woman for money. Your 'temptation' was the meanest, the most contemptible thing a man ever yielded to. 'Ambition'? God knows I never stood between you and that. Your ambition was mine, as much mine as yours, something we halved between us. Has anybody else understood it and encouraged it so well? I longed for your success as fervently as you did; if it had come, I should have rejoiced as much as you. When you were disappointed, whom did you turn to for consolation? But I could only give you sympathy; and _she_ could give you power. And everything of mine _had_ been given; you had had it. That was the main point." "Call me a villain and be done--or a man! Will reproaches help either of us now?" "Don't deceive yourself--there are noble men in the world. I tell you now, because at the time I would say nothing that you could regard as an appeal. It only wanted that to complete my indignity--for me to plead to you to change your mind!" "I wish to Heaven you had done anything rather than go, and that's the truth!" "_I_ don't; I am glad I went--glad, glad, glad! The most awful thing I can imagine is to have remained with you after I knew you for what you were. The most awful thing for you as well: knowing that I knew, the sight of me would have become a curse." "One mistake," he muttered, "one injustice, and all the rest, all that came before, is blotted out; you refuse to remember the sweetest years of both our lives!" She gazed slowly round at him with lifted head, and during a few seconds each looked in the other's face, and tried to read the history of, the interval in it. Yes, he had altered, after all. The eyes were older. Something had gone from him, something of vivacity, of hope. "Are you asking me to remember?" she said. "You seem to forget what the injustice was done for." "Mary, if you knew how wretched I am!" "Ah," she murmured half sadly, half wonderingly, "what an egotist you always are! You meet me again--after the way we parted--and you begin by talking about yourself!"