“You are not so hard with me as you were,” she said thoughtfully, after a moment’s hesitation, and there was a touch of gratitude in her voice. As she felt the dim possibility of a return to her former relations of friendship with him, Beatrice and the scene in the church seemed to be very far away. Again the Wanderer found it difficult to answer. “It is not for me to be hard, as you call it,” he said quietly. There was a scarcely perceptible smile on his face, brought there not by any feeling of satisfaction, but by his sense of his own almost laughable perplexity. He saw that he was very near being driven to the ridiculous necessity of giving her some advice of the paternal kind. “It is not for me, either, to talk to you of what you have done to Israel Kafka to-day,” he confessed. “Do not oblige me to say anything about it. It will be much safer. You know it all better than I do, and you understand your own reasons, as I never can. If you are sorry for him now, so much the better--you will not hurt him any more if you can help it. If you will say that much about the future I shall be very glad, I confess.” “Do you think that there is anything which I will not do--if you ask it?” Unorna asked very earnestly. “I do not know,” the Wanderer answered, trying to seem to ignore the meaning conveyed by her tone. “Some things are harder to do than others----” “Ask me the hardest!” she exclaimed. “Ask me to tell you the whole truth----” “No,” he said firmly, in the hope of checking an outburst of passionate speech. “What you have thought and done is no concern of mine. If you have done anything that you are sorry for, without my knowledge, I do not wish to know of it. I have seen you do many good and kind acts during the last month, and I would rather leave those memories untouched as far as possible. You may have had an object in doing them which in itself was bad. I do not care. The deeds were good. Take credit for them and let me give you credit for them. That will do neither of us any harm.” “I could tell you--if you would let me--” “Do not tell me,” he interrupted. “I repeat that I do not wish to know. The one thing that I have seen is bad enough. Let that be all. Do you not see that? Besides, I am myself the cause of it in a measure--unwilling enough, Heaven knows!” “The only cause,” said Unorna bitterly. “Then I am in some way responsible. I am not quite without blame--we men never are in such cases. If I reproach you, I must reproach myself as well--” “Reproach yourself!--ah no! What can you say against yourself?” she could not keep the love out of her voice, if she would; her bitterness had been for herself. “I will not go into that,” he answered. “I am to blame in one way or another. Let us say no more about it. Will you let the matter rest?” “And let bygones be bygones, and be friends to each other, as we were this morning?” she asked, with a ray of hope.