Almost every woman responds promptly to a claim for pity.

"I am sorry for you, Coronado," said Clara, in her artless way. "I am,
truly."

"You do not know, you cannot know, how you console me."

Satisfied with the results of his experiment in boring for sympathy, he
tried another, a dangerous one, it would seem, but very potent when it
succeeds.

"This lack of affection has had sad results. I have searched everywhere
for it, only to meet with disappointment. In my desperation I have
searched where I should not. I have demanded true love of people who had
no true love to give. And for this error and wrong I have been terribly
punished. The mere failure of hope and trust has been hard enough to bear.
But that was not the half. Shame, self-contempt, remorse have been an
infinitely heavier burden. If any man was ever cured of trusting for
happiness to a wicked world, it is Coronado."

In spite of his words and his elaborately penitent expression, Clara only
partially understood him. Some kind of evil life he was obviously
confessing, but what kind she only guessed in the vaguest fashion.
However, she comprehended enough to interest her warmly: here was a
penitent sinner who had forsaken ways of wickedness; here was a struggling
soul which needed encouragement and tenderness. A woman loves to believe
that she can be potent over hearts, and especially that she can be potent
for good. Clara fixed upon Coronado's face a gaze of compassion and
benevolence which was almost superhuman. It should have shamed him into
honesty; but he was capable of trying to deceive the saints and the