I am not worth a moment's sorrow. But don't
spoil your beautiful young life on my account! You don't know what may
be in store for you, unless you leave this house at once. You don't know
what it is to fall into the pit, to be despised, mocked, abandoned,
sneered at--to be an outcast! to find the door shut against one, to have
to creep in by hideous byways, afraid every moment lest the mask should
be stripped from one's face, and all the while to hear the laughter, the
horrible laughter of the world, a thing more tragic than all the tears
the world has ever shed. You don't know what it is. One pays for one's
sin, and then one pays again, and all one's life one pays. You must
never know that.--As for me, if suffering be an expiation, then at this
moment I have expiated all my faults, whatever they have been; for to-
night you have made a heart in one who had it not, made it and broken
it.--But let that pass. I may have wrecked my own life, but I will not
let you wreck yours. You--why, you are a mere girl, you would be lost.
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