I was imagining, when
you opened the door and stood revealed there in the light, how you might
come to me, indeed, as the angel of some better life and hope, offering
me a forgiveness as full as it was unmerited."
"It is not I who have to forgive you," I repeated.
"It is you, if any one," replied the fisherman, quickly. "I tell you, you
feel that girl Becky Weir's fault ten times more deeply than she feels it
for herself. You should never have come to this place. It was deucedly
odd and entertaining, but it was a step in the wrong direction. You put
yourself in the place of these people and translate all their possible
moods and tenses according to your own. It's a mistake. That girl, Becky,
would stare in perfect bewilderment if she could know of some of the
thoughts and emotions you doubtless attribute to her. She might even
laugh at you for your pains."
"I do not believe you," I said, not angrily nor resentfully, as might
have been earlier in our acquaintance, but with a painful, slow
positiveness. "Perhaps I was wrong in assuming the place I did in
Wallencamp, but it was not in the way you think. I don't know--I can't
see the way myself, clearly--always, but I believe that what you have
said is utterly false!"
"At least," continued the fisherman, in the old gay, frivolous tone,
which I heard now for the first time during this conversation; "I can
make her tenfold and abundant reparation--ah, you don't know--I say you
don't understand these people.
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