'I do, rather; and I would that you had not with all my heart!'
'Yes—you may well say it,' he returned gravely, as they moved onward together, she with unwilling tread. 'But don't mistake me; and I beg this because you may have been led to do so in noticing—if you did notice it—how your sudden appearance unnerved me down there. It was but a momentary spasm; and considering what you had been to me, it was natural enough. But God helped me through it, and immediately afterwards I felt that, of all persons in the world whom it was my duty and desire to save from the wrath to come, the woman whom I had so grievously wronged was that person. I have come with that sole purpose in view—nothing more.'
There was the smallest vein of scorn in her words of rejoinder: 'Have you saved yourself? Charity begins at home, they say.'
'I have done nothing!' said he impetuously. 'Heaven, as I have been telling my hearers, has done all. No amount of contempt that you can pour upon me, Tess, will equal what I have poured upon myself—the old Adam of
