on't know as I do," mumbled Peter, backing in again.

"If Miss Greta is at home tell her I should be glad to speak with
her--do you hear?" Peter disappeared.

Hugh was left alone in the hall. He waited some minutes, thinking that
Peter was carrying his message. Presently he overheard that worthy
reopening the discussion on Mother Langdale's sanity with little Jacob
in the kitchen. The deep damnation he desired just then for Brother
Peter was about to be indicated by another lusty rap on the kitchen
door, when the door of the parlor opened, and Greta herself stood on
the threshold with a smile and an outstretched hand.

"I thought it was your voice," she said, and led the way in.

"Your cordial welcome heaps coals of fire on my head, Greta. I cannot
forget in what spirit we last talked and parted."

"Let us think no more about it," said Greta, and she drew a chair for
him to the fire.

He remained standing, and as if benumbed by strong feeling.

"I have come to speak of it--to ask pardon for it--I was in the wrong,"
he said, falteringly.

She did not respond, but sat down with drooping eyes. He paused, and
there was an ominous silence.

"You don't know what I suffered, or what I suffer still. You are very
happy. I am a miserable man. Greta, do you know what it is to love
without being loved? How can you know? It is torture beyond the gift of
words--misery beyond the relief of tears. It is not jealousy; that is no
more than a vulgar kind of envy. It is a nameless, measureless torment."

He paused again. She did not speak. His voice grew tremulous.

"I'm not one of the fools who think that the souls that are created for
each other must needs come together--that destiny draws them from the
uttermost parts of the earth--that, trifle as they will with their best
hopes, fate is stronger than they are, and true to the pole-star of
ultimate happiness. I know the world too well to believe nonsense like
that. I know that every day, every hour, men and women are casting
themselves away--men on the wrong women, women on the wrong men--and
that all this is a tangle that will never, never be undone."

He stepped up to where she sat and dropped his voice to a whisper.

"Greta--permit me to say it--I loved you dearly. Would to Heaven I had
not! My love was not of yesterday. It was you and I, I and you. That was
the only true marriage possible to either of us from world's end to
world's end. But Paul came between us; and wh