d, I can prove to you that I set you above
place and ambition. If you shrink from doing it for me, do it"--he
glanced towards the bed--"do it for our child. To-morrow--to-morrow
it shall be, if you will forgive. To-morrow let us start
again--Guida--Guida!"

She did not answer at once; but at last she said "Giving up place
and ambition would prove nothing now. It is easy to repent when our
pleasures have palled. I told you in a letter four years ago that your
protests came too late. They are always too late. With a nature like
yours nothing is sure or lasting. Everything changes with the mood. It
is different with me: I speak only what I truly mean. Believe me, for
I tell you the truth, you are a man that a woman could forget but could
never forgive. As a prince you are much better than as a plain man, for
princes may do what other men may not. It is their way to take all and
give nothing. You should have been born a prince, then all your actions
would have seemed natural. Yet now you must remain a prince, for what
you got at such a price to others you must pay for. You say you would
come down from your high place, you would give up your worldly honours,
for me. What madness! You are not the kind of man with whom a woman
could trust herself in the troubles and changes of life. Laying all else
aside, if I would have had naught of your honours and your duchy long
ago, do you think I would now share a disgrace from which you could
never rise? For in my heart I feel that this remorse is but caprice. It
is to-day; it may not--will not--be tomorrow."

"You are wrong, you are wrong. I am honest with you now," he broke in.

"No," she answered coldly, "it is not in you to be honest. Your words
have no ring of truth in my ears, for the note is the same as I heard
once upon the Ecrehos. I was a young girl then and I believed; I am a
woman now, and I should still disbelieve though all the world were on
your side to declare me wrong. I tell you"--her voice rose again,
it seemed to catch the note of freedom and strength of the storm
without--"I tell you, I will still live as my heart and conscience
prompt me. The course I have set for myself I will follow; the life I
entered upon when my child was born I will not leave. No word you have
said has made my heart beat faster. You and I can never have anything
to say to each other in this life, beyond"--her voice changed, she
paused--"beyond one thing--"

Going to the bed where the chi