"Too late," he echoed, drearily. "Yes, I repented when _too late_. Ah, Mrs. Lynn, are there any sadder words than those two in the English language?" "Yes, I think so," she replied. "You remember what the poet Whittier has written? "'Of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: "It might have been."'" "'It might have been,'" he repeated. "Ah, yes, I can testify to all the sadness of those words! Have I not felt it all? Since she died my life has been one dreary penance, one long regret. Ah, Mrs. Lynn, if only I had forgiven her--if only I had not driven her from me by my harshness and cruelty! I was a fool, and blind. She loved me and made me happy. She sinned through her love, first, for Beatrix Gordon, then for me. Her story is the saddest, the most pitiful I ever heard or read. I should have forgiven the child--she was nothing but a child, and she had not been well taught. But it was all so sudden, and I was half dazed by the shock. Ah, well, I have had ample time to repent my haste and madness. The years have been long and dreary enough without my darling. Every time I come here to this quiet grave I whisper to the silent dust beneath: "'Oh, to call back the days that are not! My eyes were blinded, your words were few, Do you know the truth now up in heaven, Laurel, Laurel, tender and true?'" How the sweet passion and sorrow of the words moved her! He was sorry for his cruelty, he repented it all. She said to herself that if she had really been dead in that grave beneath him, she must have heard those words--they would have thrilled even her dust. Tennyson's beautiful words came into her mind: "My dust would hear him and beat Had it lain for a century dead, Would start and tremble under his feet And blossom in purple and red." He looked up at her sitting there so fair and young, and so like the dead, and his heart went out to her in passionate adoration. He cried out, hoarsely, in his deep emotion: "Mrs. Lynn, what do you think? Have I really sinned beyond forgiveness? If Laurel could come back from the world of shadows, do you think she would forgive me for that night?" "Are you asking me to tell you what I should do in your wife's place, Mr. Le Roy?" she asked him in a low, strange voice. "Yes, put yourself in her place," he replied. "Tell me, could you forgive me and love me again after the coldness with which I put my wife from me that night?" "I do not believe I could ever forget or forgive such unkindness," she replied. He looked at her keenly, with a brooding trouble in his eyes. "Perhaps you do not look at the subject quite as my young wife would have done," he said, anxiously. "Laurel loved me, Mrs. Lynn. Do not forget that. Would she not forgive me for love's sweet sake?" "No, I do not think she would. Her pride would be stronger than her love," answered the beautiful woman. "Laurel was not proud," said St. Leon Le Roy.