"It was a terrible discovery for me to make," he said. "I was wounded in my love, in my faith, in my pride. Can you imagine what I did, Mrs. Lynn?" He had lifted his drooping head, and was looking straight into her face. She looked back at him steadily, almost scornfully, as she replied: "You loved her so dearly, and she made you so happy, perhaps I should not err if I said that you forgave the girl for her sin." He crushed back something like a groan upon his lips. "Do you think I should have done so, Mrs. Lynn?" he asked. "I do not know how to answer you," she said, and her voice trembled. "From a woman's standpoint, I should answer yes. But men are unlike women, are they not?--harder, colder, prone to harsh judgments!" "Yes, men are harder," he said, and was silent until she broke the strange stillness with her strange voice. "Do you love Tennyson, Mr. Le Roy? I do. I think one of the grandest, most beautiful passages in the book is King Arthur's forgiveness of Guinevere's terrible sin. Do you remember those words: "'Lo! I forgive thee, as Eternal God forgives'?" "Her sin was not like Guinevere's," he said, hastily. "And therefore the more easily to be forgiven," she said. "Do you not think that your wife suffered for her sin? And, after all, it was for love's sake. And women do and dare so much for love's sake, remember." "You are speaking as if I did not forgive her," he said. "I had not told you that yet." "But I fancied it must be so," she said, "because this is her grave." The shot went home. He shivered, and a hollow groan escaped his lips. "Would she have died for such a cause?" he asked, and she answered gravely, and with a touch of sadness. "Women's hearts have broken for even lighter causes." To herself she said, mournfully: "I should have died myself if it had not been for little Laurie's coming. I could not have lived through these weary years if it had not been for the little child that loved me!" "_Her_ heart was broken then," he said, "for I refused to forgive her, Mrs. Lynn. I was hard and stern and angry. But I never dreamed what would happen." "What did she do?" inquired the brilliant novelist, with interest. "She went away that night, Mrs. Lynn, and all search for her proved futile and vain. In a few days after a body washed up from the river--a young, golden-haired woman. They said it was Laurel, my missing wife. You know the rest. This is her grave." Laurel looked at the grassy mound with a strange dreary wonder over the waif whom they had buried there. She wondered what her name and history had been. "Perhaps as sad as mine," she sighed to herself. "This is her grave," he repeated. "Ah, Mrs. Lynn, you have a glowing, vivid imagination. Can you fancy what I have suffered? Can you comprehend how the demons of remorse and despair have pursued me unceasingly?" "Then you repented when too late?" she said.