"Oh, it's hurt me!" she cried. "You don't know how it's hurt me!" "To know I was a bad 'un?" He grasped the shaking hand she thrust out before her. "Yes--I can't bear to think...." "But I've changed--I swear I have. I'm going to live a decent life; and you're going to help me--by just saying you believe I can." She shuddered, and pulled her hand away. "I tell you I've changed," he exclaimed bitterly; "won't you believe me?" She was crying now. "You don't understand ... you don't understand ... what one feels about men like you." He winced. "You don't know what I felt ... when I heard...." "Tony!" he cried, "you _must_ forgive me." "I do forgive you--it's not me you've hurt--but----" "'But' you don't forgive me, and it is you I've hurt--that's what your 'but' means." There was another silence, broken only by her muffled crying and the throbbing of the wind in the pine-tops. Nigel felt that his old life was struggling in its cerements to spring up and strangle the new life at its birth. "I can't understand," sobbed the girl, "how you or any man could have done such a horrible thing. You've been merciless and cruel and grasping and unworthy--and you won my friendship by false pretences, by lies and shams--when all the time you knew that if I'd had any idea who you really were I wouldn't have let you come near me. Oh, it probably seems only a little thing to you, but it's dreadful for me to think I've given my friendship to a man who's been a--a cad." His anger kindled, for her inexperience and ignorance no longer attracted him--they were now only fragments that remained of something he had worshipped. "Then are you going to inquire into the history of every man you meet, in case any one else should 'win your friendship under false pretences'? Most men have had a little shake up in their pasts." "You don't call yours a little shake up, do you?" The retort was obvious, and he flushed--but at the same time it gave him an unwonted courage. "No, of course not. But you mustn't think it's been just as easy for me to keep straight as for you. Do you realise what being a man means?--it means to be tempted." "Women are tempted." He laughed. "But not like men." He saw the incredulousness of her eyes, and once more his rage flared up. "You don't understand!" he cried, "you don't understand!"