PIKE. Somehow it doesn't seem as if I very likely would.

ETHEL [coming toward him]. Oh yes, you will! All those unkind things
I've said to you--

PIKE. Oh, I'll forget _those_ easy!

ETHEL [going on eagerly, but almost tearfully]. And the other things,
too, when you're once more among your kind, good home folks you like so
well--and probably there's one among them that you'll be so glad to get
back to you'll hardly know you've been away--an unworldly girl--[she
falters]--one that doesn't need to be cured--oh! of all sorts of
follies--a kind girl, one who's been always sweet to you. [Turns away
from him.] I can see her--she wears a white muslin and waits by the gate
for you at twilight [turns to him again]--isn't she like that?

PIKE [shaking his head gravely]. No; not like that.

ETHEL. But there _is_ some one there?--some one that you've cared for?

PIKE [sadly]. Well, she's only been there in a way. I've had her picture
on my desk for a good while. Sometimes when I go home in the evening she
kind of seems to be there. I bought a homey old house up on Main Street,
you know; it's the house you were born in. It's kind of lonesome
sometimes, and then I get to thinking that she's there, sitting at an
old piano, that used to be my mother's, and singing to me--

ETHEL [smiling sorrowfully]. Singing "Sweet Genevieve"?

PIKE. Yes--that's my favorite. But then I come to and I find it ain't
so, no voice comes to me, and I find there ain't anybody but me
[swallows painfully], and it's so foolish that even Jim Cooley can write
me letters making fun of it!

ETHEL. You'll find her some day--you'll find some one to fulfil that
vision--and I shall think of you in your old house among the
beech-trees. I shall think of you often with her, listening to her voice
in the twilight. And I shall be far away from that sensible, kindly
life--keeping the promise that I have made [falters], and living out--my
destiny.

PIKE [gravely]. What destiny?

ETHEL. I am bound to Almeric in his misfortune, I am bound to him _by_
his misfortune.

[She goes on with a sorrowful eagerness.]

He has to bear a name that will be a by-word of disgrace, and it is my
duty to help him bear it, to help him make it honorable again; to
inspire him in the struggle that lies before him to rise above it by his
own efforts, to make a career for himself; to make the world forget the
disgrace of his father in his own triumphs--in the product of his own
work--