When they reached it, he motioned to her to
sit. She shook her head, however, and remained standing close to a tree.
"What you wish to say--for I suppose you do wish to say something--will be
brief, of course?"
He looked at her almost curiously.
"Have you nothing kind to say to me, after all these years?" he asked
quietly.
"What is there to say now more than--then?"
"I cannot prompt you if you have no impulse. Have you none?"
"None at all. You know of what blood we are, we southerners. We do not
change."
"You changed." He knew he ought not to have said that, for he understood
what she meant.
"No, I did not change. Is it possible you do not understand? Or did you
cease to be a southerner when you became"--
"When I became a villain?" He smiled ironically. "Excuse me. Go on,
please."
"I was a girl, a happy girl. You killed me. I did not change. Death is
different. * * * But why have you come to speak of this to me? It was ages
ago. Resurrections are a mistake, believe me." She was composed and
deliberate now. Her nerve had all come back. There had been one swift wave
of the feeling that once flooded her girl's heart. It had passed and left
her with the remembrance of her wrongs and the thought of unhappy
years--through all which she had smiled, at what cost, before the world!
Come what would, he should never know that, even now, the man he once was
remained as the memory of a beautiful dead thing--not this man come to her
like a ghost.
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