osure, "for God's
sake listen to me! To-night we have to face our fate. To-night you have
to say--"

"Fate was faced long ago. I have nothing to say."

"Guida, I have repented of all. I have come now only to speak honestly
of the wrong I did you. I have come to--"

Scorn sharpened her words, though she spoke calmly: "You have forced
yourself upon a woman's presence--and at this hour!"

"I chose the only hour possible," he answered quickly. "Guida, the past
cannot be changed, but we have the present and the future still. I have
not come to justify myself, but to find a way to atone."

"No atonement is possible."

"You cannot deny me the right to confess to you that--"

"To you denial should not seem hard usage," she answered slowly, "and
confession should have witnesses--"

She paused suggestively. The imputation that he of all men had the least
right to resent denial; that, dishonest still, he was willing to justify
her privately though not publicly; that repentance should have been open
to the world--it all stung him.

He threw out his hands in a gesture of protest. "As many witnesses as
you will, but not now, not this hour, after all these years. Will you
not at least listen to me, and then judge and act? Will you not hear me,
Guida?"

She had not yet even stirred. Now that it had come, this scene was all
so different from what she might have imagined. But she spoke out of a
merciless understanding, an unchangeable honesty. Her words came clear
and pitiless:

"If you will speak to the point and without a useless emotion, I will
try to listen. Common kindness should have prevented this intrusion--by
you!"

Every word she said was like a whip-lash across his face. A devilish
light leapt into his eye, but it faded as quickly as it came.

"After to-night, to the public what you will," he repeated with dogged
persistence, "but it was right we should speak alone to each other at
least this once before the open end. I did you wrong, yet I did not mean
to ruin your life, and you should know that. I ought not to have married
you secretly; I acknowledge that. But I loved you--"

She shook her head, and with a smile of pitying disdain--he could so
little see the real truth, his real misdemeanour--she said: "Oh no,
never--never! You were not capable of love; you never knew what it
means. From the first you were too untrue ever to love a woman. There
was a great fire of emotion, you saw shadows on the wall, and y