It is we who are now--now! now! Don't you hear? As
you say, I have been inconstant. I have sinned. Good. But should not
you, too, cry _peccavi_? If I have broken promises, have not you? Your
love of the rose garden was of all time, or so you said. Where is it
now?"
"It is here! now!" he cried, striking his breast passionately with
clenched hand. "It has always been."
"And your love was a great love; there was none greater," she continued;
"or so you said in the rose garden. Yet it is not fine enough, large
enough, to forgive me here, crying now at your feet?"
The man hesitated. His mouth opened; words shaped vainly on his lips.
She had forced him to bare his heart and speak truths which he had hidden
from himself. And she was good to look upon, standing there in a glory
of passion, calling back old associations and warmer life. He turned
away his head that he might not see, but she passed around and fronted
him.
"Look at me, Dave! Look at me! I am the same, after all. And so are
you, if you would but see. We are not changed."
Her hand rested on his shoulder, and his had half-passed, roughly, about
her, when the sharp crackle of a match startled him to himself.
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