“Why should I not come?” she said.  “Of course I came when I was told that you were here.  I do not think that there need be a quarrel between us, because we have changed our minds.”

“Such changes make quarrels,” said he.

“It shall not do so with me, unless you choose that it shall,” said Violet.  “Why should we be enemies,—­we who have known each other since we were children?  My dearest friends are your father and your sister.  Why should we be enemies?”

“I have come to ask you whether you think that I have ill-used you?”

“Ill-used me!  Certainly not.  Has any one told you that I have accused you?”

“No one has told me so.”

“Then why do you ask me?”

“Because I would not have you think so,—­if I could help it.  I did not intend to be rough with you.  When you told me that my life was disreputable—­”

“Oh, Oswald, do not let us go back to that.  What good will it do?”

“But you said so.”

“I think not.”

“I believe that that was your word,—­the harshest word that you could use in all the language.”

“I did not mean to be harsh.  If I used it, I will beg your pardon.  Only let there be an end of it.  As we think so differently about life in general, it was better that we should not be married.  But that is settled, and why should we go back to words that were spoken in haste, and which are simply disagreeable?”

“I have come to know whether it is settled.”

“Certainly.  You settled it yourself, Oswald.  I told you what I thought myself bound to tell you.  Perhaps I used language which I should not have used.  Then you told me that I could not be your wife;—­and I thought you were right, quite right.”

“I was wrong, quite wrong,” he said impetuously.  “So wrong, that I can never forgive myself, if you do not relent.  I was such a fool, that I cannot forgive myself my folly.  I had known before that I could not live without you; and when you were mine, I threw you away for an angry word.”

“It was not an angry word,” she said.

“Say it again, and let me have another chance to answer it.”

“I think I said that idleness was not,—­respectable, or something like that, taken out of a copy-book probably.  But you are a man who do not like rebukes, even out of copy-books.  A man so thin-skinned as you are must choose for himself a wife with a softer tongue than mine.”

“I will choose none other!” he said.  But still he was savage in his tone and in his gestures.  “I made my choice long since, as you know well enough.  I do not change easily.  I cannot change in this.  Violet, say that you will be my wife once more, and I will swear to work for you like a coal-heaver.”

“My wish is that my husband,—­should I ever have one,—­should work, not exactly as a coal-heaver.”

“Come, Violet,” he said,—­and now the look of savagery departed from him, and there came a smile over his face, which, however, had in it more of sadness than of hope or joy,—­“treat me fairly,—­or rather, treat me generously if you can.  I do not know whether you ever loved me much.”