"She has come to tell me she is going to marry Clarence, and she finds
it difficult, poor girl," thought Beth, with a heart full of sympathy.
"Beth," said Marie at last, "I have wronged you. I have come here to ask
you to forgive me."
Beth belonged to the kind of people who are always silent in
emergencies, so she only looked at her with her great tender eyes, in
which there was no trace of resentment.
"I came between you and Clarence Mayfair. He never loved me. It was only
a fancy. I amused and interested him, I suppose. That was all. He is
true to you in the depths of his heart, Beth. It was my fault--all my
fault. He never loved me. It was you he loved, but I encouraged him. It
was wrong, I know."
Something seemed to choke her for a moment.
"Will you forgive me, Beth? Can you ever forgive?"
She was leaning forward gracefully, her fur cape falling back from her
shoulders and her dark eyes full of tears.
Beth threw both arms about her old friend tenderly, forgetting all the
bitter thoughts she had once had.
"Oh, Marie, dear, I love you--I love you still. Of course I forgive
you."
Then Beth told her all the story of the past, and of that night when she
had learned that Clarence did not love her, of her wounded vanity, her
mistaken belief in the genuineness of her own love for him, and her
gradual awakening to the fact that it was not love after all.
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