would never forgive him. She ought not to. It was vile. He had said other things to her. He had said that she was not square with David Malua. He had said abominable things about matters which did not concern him; and she had been right to assert herself and to call him to account; but couldn't she understand that it was because of his love, because of the torture of his love? And then his calmer self said: "But when you called that love unfortunate and fled from her, you called down the dividing curtain between you. You lowered it yourself. What else could a woman do, in the face of anything like that? Oh, fool, fool, fool! To have had in your hand the one thing on earth that could make life worth living, and you cast it out like something unworthy,—you cast it at her feet with bitterness, as a misfortune!"
Back and forth, back and forth on the lanai he walked, hour after hour. What could he say? What could he do? How could he make her understand that this thing which he had termed a misfortune, was the dearest thing in his life? How could he ever heal the breach enough to come near again so that he might at least tell her of his torture and his humiliation; and that the proudest thing which he possessed was this love for her, whether she would have it or not? What was it to him, who she was, what she had done, what anyone said? She was Evalani, his one love; and nothing else in the wide
