Keyork broke into a peal of laughter, deep, rolling, diabolical in its despairing, frantic mirth. He was still laughing as he reached the door. “Her soul, her soul!” they heard him cry, between one burst and another as he went out, and from the echoing vestibule, and from the staircase beyond, the great laughter rolled back to them when they were left alone. “What is it all? I cannot understand,” the Wanderer said, looking up to the grand calm face. “It is not always given to evil to do good, even for evil’s sake,” said the old man. “The thing that he would is done already. The wound that he would make is already bleeding; the heart he is gone to break is broken; the soul that he would torture is beyond all his torments.” “Is Unorna dead?” the Wanderer asked, turning, he knew now why, with a sort of reverence to his companion. “She is not dead.” Unorna waited in the parlour of the convent. Then Beatrice came in, and stood before her. Neither feared the other, and each looked into the other’s eyes. “I have come to undo what I have done,” Unorna said, not waiting for the cold inquiry which she knew would come if she were silent. “That will be hard, indeed,” Beatrice answered. “Yes. It is very hard. Make it still harder if you can, I could still do it.” “And do you think I will believe you, or trust you?” asked the dark woman. “I know that you will when you know how I have loved him.” “Have you come here to tell me of your love?” “Yes. And when I have told you, you will forgive me.” “I am no saint,” said Beatrice, coldly. “I do not find forgiveness in such abundance as you need.” “You will find it for me. You are not bad, as I am, but you can understand what I have done, nevertheless, for you know what you yourself would do for the sake of him we love. No--do not be angry with me yet--I love him and I tell you so--that you may understand.” “At that price, I would rather not have the understanding. I do not care to hear you say it. It is not good to hear.” “Yet, if I did not love him as I do, I should not be here, of my own free will, to take you to him. I came for that.” “I do not believe you,” Beatrice answered in tones like ice. “And yet you will, and very soon. Whether you forgive or not--that is another matter. I cannot ask it. God knows how much easier it would have been to die than to come here. But if I were dead you might never have found him, nor he you, though you are so very near together. Do you think it is easier for me to come to you, whom he loves, than it is for you to hear me say I love him, when I come to give him to you? If you had found it all, not as it is, but otherwise--if you had found that in these years he had known me and loved me, as he once loved you, if he turned from you coldly and bid you forget him, because he would be happy with me, and because he had utterly forgotten you--would it be easy for you to give him up?” “He loved me then--he loves me still,” Beatrice said. “It is another case.”