He has
felt it too." When she saw his hands, that they had become white and
thin, and that he was hollow-eyed, she felt a sharp pang of pity. "It is
time now for you to think of yourself," she said.

"No," he answered, with a gesture of distaste. "The less of that the
better. I am utterly and for ever out of my own good graces. I will not
forgive myself, and I cannot forget--have I only one mistake to deplore?
I have covered myself with disgrace," he continued, with infinite
self-scorn; "even you with your half divine pity cannot excuse me
there."

"Cannot I?" she answered with a sweet wistfulness, that was almost
tender.

He set his teeth as if in a passion against himself, a flash came from
the blue eyes, and his Saxon complexion showed the blood through almost
to the roots of the hair. "I have covered myself with disgrace--I am the
most unmanly fool that ever breathed--I hate myself!" He started up and
paced the room, as if he felt choked, whilst she looked on amazed for
the moment, and not yet aware what this meant.

"John!" she exclaimed.

"I suppose you thought I had forgotten to despise myself," he went on in
a tone rather less defiant. "When that night I asked you for a kiss--I
had not, nothing of the kind--I thought my mind would go, or my breath
would leave me before the morning. Surely that would have been so but
for you. But if I have lived through this for good ends, one at least
has been that I have learned my place in creation--and yours. I have
seen more than once since that you have felt vexed with yourself for the
form your compassion took then. I deserve that you should think I
misunderstood, but I did not. I came to tell you so. It should have been
above all things my care not to offend the good angel so necessary in my
house during those hours of my misfortune. But I am destined never to be
right--never. I let you divine all too easily the secret I should have
kept--my love, my passion. It was my own fault, to betray it was to
dismiss you. Well, I have done that also."

Emily drew a long breath, put her hand to her delicate throat, and
turning away hastily moved into the window, and gazed out with
wide-opened eyes; Her face suffused with a pale tint of carnation was
too full of unbelieving joy to be shown to him yet. He had made a
mistake, though not precisely the mistake he supposed. He was destined,
so long as he lived, never to have it explained. It was a mistake which
made all things rig