t care
to hear you say it. It is not good to hear."

"Yet, if I did not love him as I do, I should not be here, of my own
free will, to take you to him. I came for that."

"I do not believe you," Beatrice answered in tones like ice.

"And yet you will, and very soon. Whether you forgive or not--that is
another matter. I cannot ask it. God knows how much easier it would have
been to die than to come here. But if I were dead you might never have
found him, nor he you, though you are so very near together. Do you
think it is easier for me to come to you, whom he loves, than it is for
you to hear me say I love him, when I come to give him to you? If you
had found it all, not as it is, but otherwise--if you had found that in
these years he had known me and loved me, as he once loved you, if he
turned from you coldly and bid you forget him, because he would be happy
with me, and because he had utterly forgotten you--would it be easy for
you to give him up?"

"He loved me then--he loves me still," Beatrice said. "It is another
case."

"A much more bitter case. Even then you would have the memory of his
love, which I can never have--in true reality, though I have much to
remember, in his dreams of you."

Beatrice started a little, and her brow grew dark and angry.

"Then you have tried to get what was not yours by your bad powers!" she
cried. "And you have made him sleep--and dream--what?"

"Of you."

"And he talked of love?"

"Of love for you."

"To you?"

"To me."

"And dreamed that you were I? That too?"

"That I was you."

"Is there more to tell?" Beatrice asked, growing white. "He kissed you
in that dream of his--do not tell me he did that--no, tell me--tell me
all!"

"He kissed the thing he saw, believing the lips yours."

"More--more--is it not done yet? Can you sting again? What else?"

"Nothing--save that last night I tried to kill you, body and soul."

"And why did you not kill me?"

"Because you woke. Then the nun saved you. If she had not come, you
would have slept again, and slept for ever. And I would have let his
dreams last, and made it last--for him, I should have been the only
Beatrice."

"You have done all this, and you ask me to forgive you?"

"I ask nothing. If you will not go to him, I will bring him to you--"

Beatrice turned away and walked across the room.

"Loved her," she said aloud, "and talked to her of love, and kissed--"
She stopped suddenly. Then she came back aga