“Did he do that?” and listened with instinctive repugnance to the details fabricated by the inventive genius of Conrad. [110] [110] He next cleverly alluded again to his past follies, and appealed to Monica’s generosity not to change towards him because he had sinned. “It is so hard to feel cast off by old friends,” he said, with a very expressive look at the girl. “I know what it is to see myself cold shouldered by those to whom I have learned to look up with reverence and affection. I have suffered very much from misrepresentation and hardness—suffered beyond what I deserve. I did fall once—I was sorely tempted, and I did commit one act of ingratitude and deceit that I have most bitterly repented of. I was very young and sorely tempted, and I did something which might have placed me in the felon’s dock, and would have done so had somebody not far away had his [111]will. But I was forgiven by the man I had injured, and I have tried my utmost since to make atonement for the past. The hardest part of all has been to see myself scorned and contemned by those whose good-will I have most wished to win. Sometimes I have known sorrow that has been akin to despair. I have been met with coldness and disdain when most I needed help and sympathy. Monica, you will not help to push me back into the abyss? You will not help to make me think that repentance is in vain?” [111] She looked at him very seriously, her eyes full of a sort of thoughtful surprise. “I, Conrad. What have I to do with it or with you?” “This much,” he answered, taking her hand and looking straight into her eyes: [112]“this much, Monica—that nothing so helps a man who has fallen once as the friendship of a noble woman like yourself; nothing hurts him more than her ill-will or distrust. Give me your friendship, and I will make myself worthy of it; turn your back coldly upon me, and I shall feel doomed to despair.” [112] “We have been friends all our lives, Conrad,” said Monica, with gentle seriousness. “You know that if I could help you in the way you mean I should like to do so.” “You will not change—you will not turn your back upon me, whatever he may say of me?” She looked at him steadily, and answered, “No.”
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