He saw the remark shake her into startled half-comprehension. That she still took his words at their face value proved to him again how strangely simple she was. “What makes you think I’ve forgotten?” he repeated. She raised her eyes in arrested astonishment and met his, now seeming suddenly to have become charged with memories of the scene in the cottage. “How could I forget?” he murmured. “Do you really think I could ever forget that evening?” She turned away speechless with embarrassment and anger, recollections of the kisses of that ill-omened interview burning in her face. “When a man wounds the one woman in the world he cares for, can he ever forget, do you think?” He again had the gratification of seeing her flash a look of artless surprise at him. “Then--then--” she stammered, completely bewildered, “if you know that you wounded me so, why do you come back? Why do you speak to me now? There is nothing more to be said between us.” “Yes, there is; much more.” She drew back, frowning, on the alert to go. For a second he thought he was to lose this precious and unlooked-for chance of righting himself with her. “Sit down,” he said entreatingly; “sit down; I must speak to you.” She turned from him and sent a quick glance toward Benito. She was going. “Mariposa,” he said, desperately catching at her arm, “please--a moment. Give me one moment. You _must_ listen to me.” She tried to draw her arm away, but he held it, and pleaded, genuine feeling flushing his face and roughening his voice. “I beg--I implore--of you to listen to me. I only ask a moment. Don’t condemn me without hearing what I have to say. I behaved like a blackguard. I know it. It’s haunted me ever since. Sit down and listen to me while I try to explain and make you forgive me.” He was really stirred; the sincerity of his appeal touched the heart, once so warm, now grown so cold toward him. She sat down on the bench, at the end farthest from him, her whole bearing suggesting self-contained aloofness. “I know I shocked and hurt you. I know it’s just and natural for you to treat me this way. I was mad. I didn’t know what I was saying. If you knew how I have suffered since you would at least have some pity for me. Can you guess what it means to give a blow to the being who is more to you than all the rest of the world? I was mad for that one evening.” He paused, looking at her. Her profile was toward him, pale and immovable. She neither turned nor spoke. He continued with a slight diminution of confidence: “I’ve been a wild sort of fellow, consorting with all sorts of riffraff and thinking lightly of women. I’ve met lots of all kinds. It was all right to talk to them that way. You were different. I knew it from the first. But that night in the cottage I lost my head. You looked so pale and sad; my love broke the bonds I had put upon it. Can’t you understand and forgive me?”