s if by mutual consent, they made their way
up the bank and the hillside to the top of a pretty terrace, where was a
rustic seat among the trees. When they reached it, he motioned to her to
sit. She shook her head, however, and remained standing close to a tree.

"What you wish to say--for I suppose you do wish to say something--will be
brief, of course?"

He looked at her almost curiously.

"Have you nothing kind to say to me, after all these years?" he asked
quietly.

"What is there to say now more than--then?"

"I cannot prompt you if you have no impulse. Have you none?"

"None at all. You know of what blood we are, we southerners. We do not
change."

"You changed." He knew he ought not to have said that, for he understood
what she meant.

"No, I did not change. Is it possible you do not understand? Or did you
cease to be a southerner when you became"--

"When I became a villain?" He smiled ironically. "Excuse me. Go on,
please."

"I was a girl, a happy girl. You killed me. I did not change. Death is
different. * * * But why have you come to speak of this to me? It was ages
ago. Resurrections are a mistake, believe me." She was composed and
deliberate now. Her nerve had all come back. There had been one swift wave
of the feeling that once flooded her girl's heart. It had passed and left
her with the remembrance of her wrongs and the thought of unhappy
years--through all which she had smiled, at what cost, before the world!
Come what would, he should never know that, even now, the man he once was
remained as the memory of a beautiful dead thing--not this man come to her
like a ghost.

"I always believed you," he answered quietly, "and I see no reason to
change."

"In that case we need say no more," she said, opening her red parasol and
stepping slightly forward into the sunshine as if to go.

There ran into his face a sudden flush. She was harder, more cruel, than
he had thought were possible to any woman. "Wait," he said angrily, and
put out his hand as if to stop her. "By heaven, you shall!"

"You are sudden and fierce," she rejoined coldly. "What do you wish me to
say? What I did not finish--that southerners love altogether or--hate
altogether?"

His face became like stone. At last, scarce above a whisper, he said: "Am
I to understand that you hate me, that nothing can wipe it out--no
repentance and no remorse? You never gave me a chance for a word of
explanation or excuse. You refused to see me