a wish to say it again. I know that
all the time you we'e betta than what you did, and I blame myself a good
deal moa fo' not knowing when you came to Florence that I had begun to
ca'e fo'some one else. But I did wait till I could see you again, so
as to be su'a which I ca'ed for the most. I tried to be fai'a, before I
told you that I wanted to be free. That is all," she said, gently, and
Gregory perceived that the word was left definitely to him.

He could not take it till he had disciplined himself to accept
unmurmuringly his sentence as he understood it. "At any rate," he began,
"I can thank you for rating my motive above my conduct."

"Oh," she said. "I don't think either of us acted very well. I didn't
know till aftawa'ds that I was glad to have you give up, the way you did
in Florence. I was--bewild'ed. But I ought to have known, and I want
you to undastand everything, now. I don't ca'e for you because I used
to when I was almost a child, and I shouldn't want you to ca'e for me
eitha, because you did then. That's why I wish you had neva felt that
you had always ca'ed fo' me."

"Yes," said Gregory. He let fall his head in despair.

"That is what I mean," said Clementina. "If we ah' going to begin
togetha, now, it's got to be as if we had neva begun before. And you
mustn't think, or say, or look as if the'e had been anything in oua
lives but ouaselves. Will you? Do you promise?" She stopped, and put her
hand on his breast, and pushed against it with a nervous vehemence.

"No!" he said. "I don't promise, for I couldn't keep my promise. What
you ask is impossible. The past is part of us; it can't be ignored any
more than it can be destroyed. If we take each other, it must be for all
that we have been as well as all that we are. If we haven't the courage
for that we must part."

He dropped the little one's hand which he had been holding, and moved a
few steps aside. "Don't!" she said. "They'll think I've made you," and
he took the child's hand again.

They had emerged from the shadow of the woods, and come in sight of her
father's house. Claxon was standing coatless before the door in full
enjoyment of the late afternoon air; his wife beside him, at sight of
Gregory, quelled a natural impulse to run round the corner of the house
from the presence of strangers.

"I wonda what they'a sayin'," she fretted.

"It looks some as if she was sayin' yes," said Claxon, with an
impersonal enjoyment of his conjecture. "I