"I can't--I can't look you in the face," he stammered, his attitude
perfectly corroborative of his words. "I would--oh, I would kneel in the
dust here before you--"

"Some of the poetry you told me you write?"

"I've never written any poetry," he said, not looking up. "Perhaps I
can--now. What I want to say is--I'm so ashamed of it--I don't know how
to get the words out, but I must. I may never see you again, and I must.
I 'm sorry--please try to forgive me--I wasn't myself when I did it--"

"Blurt it out; that's the best way."

"I'm sorry," he floundered--"I'm sorry I kissed you."

She laughed her tired laugh and said in her tired voice the last words
he was ever destined to hear from her:

"Oh, I don't mind, if you don't. It was so innocent, it was what decided
me."

One of the hundreds of good saints that belong to Rome must have
overheard her and pitied the young man, for it is ascribable only to
some such special act of mercy that Mellin understood (and he did)
exactly what she meant.