"No, Willoughby! The irreparable error was mine, the blame is mine,
mine only. I live to repent it. I do not seek, for I have not deserved,
your pardon. Had I it, I should need my own self-esteem to presume to
clasp it to a bosom ever unworthy of you."

"I may have been impatient, Clara: we are human!"

"Never be it mine to accuse one on whom I laid so heavy a weight of
forbearance!"

"Still, my old love!--for I am merely quoting history in naming you
so--I cannot have been perfectly blameless."

"To me you were, and are."

"Clara!"

"Willoughby!"

"Must I recognize the bitter truth that we two, once nearly one! so
nearly one! are eternally separated?"

"I have envisaged it. My friend--I may call you friend; you have ever
been my friend, my best friend! oh, that eyes had been mine to know the
friend I had!--Willoughby, in the darkness of night, and during days
that were as night to my soul, I have seen the inexorable finger
pointing my solitary way through the wilderness from a Paradise
forfeited by my most wilful, my wanton, sin. We have met. It is more
than I have merited. We part. In mercy let it be for ever. Oh, terrible
word! Coined by the passions of our youth, it comes to us for our sole