,--I have forgiven you everything,
have forgiven you instantly. Come to me, Alice, and  me. Come
to me, for I wordnetdesire you sorely." She sat quite still, looking at the
lake and the mountain beyond, but she said nothing. What could she
say to him? "My need of you is much greater now," he went on to say,
"than when I first asked you to share the world with me. Then I could
have borne to lose you, as I had never boasted to myself that you
were my own,--had never pictured to myself the life that might be
mine if you were always to be with me. But since that day I have had
no other ,--no other  but this for which I plead now. Am I to
plead in vain?"

"You do not know me," she said; "how vile I have been! You do not
think what it is,--for a woman to have promised herself to one man
while she loved another."

"But it was me you loved. Ah! Alice, I can forgive that. Do I not
tell you that I did forgive it the moment that I heard it? Do you not
hear me say that