aith has humiliated me; your unquestioning trust has made me
ashamed. And so I have come to tell you the deception, and to tell you
also that I love you so that I will no longer trust myself. I do not say
that I can not, but that I will not. And I feel the strongest
self-reproach of my life that I took advantage of your innocent faith to
draw out, even for that short time, the proof which I did not need; for
ever since that morning in the garden, Anne, I have known that you loved
me. It was that which hurt me in your marriage. But you are so sweet,
so dangerously sweet to me, and I--have not been accustomed to deny
myself. This is no excuse; I do not offer it as such. But remember what
kind of a man I have been; remember that I love you, and--forgive me."

For the first time he now looked at her. Still and white as a snow
statue, she met his gaze mutely.

"I can say no more, Anne, unless you tell me you forgive me."

She did not answer. He moved as if to rise and come to her, but she
stretched out her hand to keep him back.

"You are too weak," she murmured, hurriedly. "Yes, yes, I forgive you."

"You will wish to know how it all happened," he began again, and his
voice showed his increasing exhaustion.

"No; I do not care to hear."

"I will write it, then."

There was a momentary pause; he closed his eyes. The girl, noting, amid
her own suffering, the deathly look upon his face, came to his side.
"You must go back to the house," she said. "Will my arm be enough? Or
shall I call July?"

He looked at her; a light came back into his eyes. "Anne," he whispered,
"would not the whole world be well lost to us if we could have but love
and each other?"

She returned his gaze. "Yes," she said, "it would--if happiness were
all."

"Then you _would_ be happy with me, darling?"

"Yes."

"Alone with me, and--in banishment?"

"In banishment, in disgrace, in poverty, pain, and death," she answered,
steadily.

"Then you will go with me, trusting to me only?" He was holding her
hands now, and she did not withdraw them.

"No," she answered; "never. If happiness were all, I said. But it is not
all. There is something nearer, higher than happiness." She paused. Then
rapidly and passionately these words broke from her: "Ward, Ward, you
are far more than my life to me. Do not kill me, kill my love for you,
my faith in you, by trying to tempt me more. You could not succeed; I
tell you plainly you could never succeed; but