'No, no—never to you!'
'Yes. You are the Musoncella even to me. That is because you do not love me! Listen. This is the most cruel dilemma you could place me in; I must do what is base, either going with him or remaining by you. Why did you bring me his message? Why did you put me in this strait? A man in my circumstances is like a bird with a broken wing; strive as he may he cannot rise. You have but brought me a torture the more. Take his arms back to him; I will owe him nothing. He sent me this offer only that he might make me feel the impotent thing I am. Whether I owe my bread and my shelter to you or to him, either way I am a beggar and ashamed!'
She heard him with infinite distress.
She could not follow the sudden changes of his thoughts; she did not see the injustice of his upbraiding; she was only stirred to contrition at her own share in this message which it had cost her so much to bear to him. She was overwhelmed with grief that she had seemed to put before him her own service, her own danger, for a single instant.
His rapid facile speech and his more
