ll. I was
sacrificed, or I sacrificed, have it as you wish. But, my God! Dave, I
gave you up! You never did _me_ justice. Think what I have gone
through!"

"It was not your will? Pressure? Under high heaven there was no thing
to will you to this man's bed or that."

"But I cared for you all the time," she pleaded.

"I was unused to your way of measuring love. I am still unused. I do
not understand."

"But now! now!"

"We were speaking of this man you saw fit to marry. What manner of man
was he? Wherein did he charm your soul? What potent virtues were his?
True, he had a golden grip,--an almighty golden grip. He knew the odds.
He was versed in cent per cent. He had a narrow wit and excellent
judgment of the viler parts, whereby he transferred this man's money to
his pockets, and that man's money, and the next man's. And the law
smiled. In that it did not condemn, our Christian ethics approved. By
social measure he was not a bad man. But by your measure, Karen, by
mine, by ours of the rose garden, what was he?"

"Remember, he is dead."

"The fact is not altered thereby. What was he? A great, gross, material
creature, deaf to song, blind to beauty, dead to the spirit. He was fat
with laziness, and flabby-cheeked, and the round of his belly witnessed
his gluttony--"

"But he is dead. It is we who are now--now! now! Don't you hear? As
you say, I have been inconstant. I have sinned. Good. But should not
you, too, cry _peccavi_? If I have broken promises, have not you? Your
love of the rose garden was of all time, or so you said. Where is it
now?"

"It is here! now!" he cried, striking his breast passionately with
clenched hand. "It has always been."

"And your love was a great love; there was none greater," she continued;
"or so you said in the rose garden. Yet it is not fine enough, large
enough, to forgive me here, crying now at your feet?"

The man hesitated. His mouth opened; words shaped vainly on his lips.
She had forced him to bare his heart and speak truths which he had hidden
from himself. And she was good to look upon, standing there in a glory
of passion, calling back old associations and warmer life. He turned
away his head that he might not see, but she passed around and fronted
him.

"Look at me, Dave! Look at me! I am the same, after all. And so are
you, if you would but see. We are not changed."

Her hand rested on his shoulder, and his had half-passed,