terrible! I pity him, I blame myself--and yet I cannot wish him
back. Listen to me, David. I am afraid I am glad he is dead. What do you
think of that? Oh! what a mystery the human heart is! How can these
terrible contradictions exist together? I would give my life to undo
that wrong, and yet I should die if it were undone. All this is in the
heart of a woman--so much of love, so much of hate, for I should have
hated him, at last! I cannot understand myself. I cannot understand this
story. What does all this mean for us, David? Perhaps you can see the
light now, as you used to! I think from your face and your voice that
you are your old self again. Oh! if you can see that inner light once
more, consult it. Ask it if there is any reason why we cannot be happy
now? Tell it that your Pepeeta is too weak to endure this separation any
longer. I am only a woman, David! I cannot any longer bear life alone. I
love you too deeply. I cannot live without you."

Waiting long before he answered, as if to reflect and be sure, David
said quietly but confidently, "Pepeeta, I cannot see any reason why we
should not begin our lives over again, starting at this very place from
which we made that false beginning three long years ago. We cannot go
back, but, in a sense, we can begin again."

"But can we really begin again?" she asked. "How is it possible? I do
not see! We are not what we were. There is so much of evil in our
hearts. We were pure and innocent three years ago. Is it not necessary
to be pure and innocent? And how can we be with all this fearful past
behind us? We cannot become children again!"

"I have thought much and deeply about it," David responded. I know not
what subtle change has taken place within me, but I know that it has
been great and real. My heart was hard, but now it is tender. It was
full of despair, and now it is full of hope. I am not as innocent as I
was that night when you heard me speak in the old Quaker meeting-house,
or rather I am not innocent in the same way. My heart was then like a
spring among the mountains; it had a sort of virgin innocence. I had
sinned only in thought, and in the dreamy imaginations of unfolding
youth. It is different now; a whole world of realized, actualized evil
lies buried in the depths of my soul. It is there, but it is there only
as a memory and not as a living force. There must in some way, I cannot
tell how, be a purity of guilt as well as of innocence, and perhaps it