"Why, Owen, how strangely you talk! How could you have done any differently under the circumstances?"
"Oh, I could have done very differently. I might have seen him, and talked with him brotherly, face to face. He was a fearless and generous soul! And I was meanly scared for my wretched little decorums, for my responsibility to her friends, and I gave him no chance."
"We wouldn't let you give him any," interrupted his wife.
"Don't try to deceive yourself, don't try to deceive _me_, Celia! I know well enough that you would have been glad to have me show mercy; and I would not even show him the poor grace of passing his offer in silence, if I must refuse it. I couldn't spare him even so much as that!"
"We decided--we both decided--that it would be better to cut off all hope at once," urged his wife.
"Ah, it was I who decided that--decided everything. Leave me to deal honestly with myself at last, Celia! I have tried long enough to believe that it was not I who did it!" The pent-up doubt of years, the long-silenced self-accusal, burst forth in his words. "Oh, I have suffered for it! I thought he must come back, somehow, as long as we stayed in Venice. When we left Peschiera without a glimpse of him--I wonder I outlived it. But even if I had seen him there, what use would it have been? Would I have tried to repair the wrong done? What did I do but impute unmanly and impudent motives to him when he seized his chance to see her once more at that masquerade--"
"No, no, Owen! He was not the one. Lily was satisfied of that long ago. It was nothing but a chance, a coincidence. Perhaps it was some one he had told about the affair--"
"No matter! no matter! If I thought it was he, my blame is the same. And she, poor girl,--in my lying compassion for him, I used to accuse her of cold-heartedness, of indifference! I wonder she did not abhor the sight of me. How has she ever tolerated the presence, the friendship, of a man who did her this irreparable wrong? Yes, it has spoiled her life, and it was my work. No, no, Celia! you and she had nothing to do with it, except as I forced your consent--it was my work; and, however I have tried openly and secretly to shirk it, I must bear this fearful responsibility."