window. If Ivy could have seen the workings of his face, there would
have been a revelation to her also. But she was too highly excited to
notice anything. He came back to her and spoke in a low voice,--

"Ivy, this is too much. This I did not expect."

He laid his hand upon her head as he had often done before. She shook
it off passionately.

"Yes, I hate you. I hate you, because"--

"Because I wanted you to love me?"

"No, Sir; because I do love you, and you bring me only wretchedness. I
have never been happy since the miserable day I first saw you."

"Then, Ivy, I have utterly failed in what it has been my constant
endeavor to do."

"No, Sir, you have succeeded in what you endeavored to do. You have
taught me. You have given me knowledge and thought, and showed me the
source of knowledge. But I had better have been the ignorant girl you
found me. You have taken from me what I can never find again. I have
made a bitter exchange. I was ignorant and stupid, I know,--but I was
happy and contented; and now I am wretched and miserable and wicked.
You have come between me and my home and my father and mother;--between
me and all the bliss of my past and all my hope for the future."

"And thus, Ivy, have you come between me and my past and my
future;--yet not thus. You shut out from my heart all the sorrow and