n your power to wound me."

"True. I should not have allowed that fact to escape me. Yet hear me.
It is my love urges me on."

"Your--love!" With slow and scornful disbelief.

"Yes,--mine. In spite of all that has come and gone, you know me well
enough to understand how dear you still are to me. No, you need not say
a word. I can see by your face that you will never pardon. There is no
greater curse than to love a woman who gives one but bare tolerance in
return."

"Why did you not think of all this while there was yet time?"

"One drifts--until it is too late to seek for remedies. My heaviest
misfortune lies in the fact that I cannot root you from my heart."

"A terrible misfortune, no doubt,"--with a little angry flash from her
azure eyes,--"but one that time will cure."

"Will it?" Wistfully. "Shall I indeed learn to forget you, Molly,--to
look back upon my brief but happy past as an idle dream? I hardly hope
so much."

"And would you waste all your best days," asks she, in tones that
tremble ever so little, "in thinking of me? Remember all you said,--all
you meant,--how 'thankful you were to find me out in time.'"

"And will you condemn forever because of a few words spoken in a moment
of despair and terrible disappointment?" pleads he. "I acknowledge my
fault. I was wrong; I was too hasty. I behaved like a brute, if you
will; but then I believed I had grounds for fear. When once I saw your
face, heard your voice, looked into your eyes, I knew how false my
accusations were; but it was then too late."

"Too late, indeed."

"How calmly you can say it!" with exquisite reproach. "Have five
minutes blotted out five months? Did you know all the anguish I endured
on seeing you with--Shadwell--I think you might forgive."

"I might. But I could not forget. Would I again consent to be at the
mercy of one who without a question pronounced me guilty? A thousand
times no!"

"Say at once you are glad to be rid of me," breaks he in bitterly,
stung by her persistent coldness.

"You are forgetting your original purpose," she says, after a slight
pause, declining to notice his last remark. "Was there not something
you wished to say to me?"

"Yes." Rousing himself with an impatient sigh. "Molly," blanching a
little, and trying to read her face, with all his heart in his
eyes,--"are you going to marry Shadwell?"

Molly colors richly (a rare thing with her), grows pale again, clasps
and unclasps her slender fingers