"Ye wished for some weapon wherewith to take a coward's life. Here is my sword, Jean, and here is my heart. I would not be sorry to die, and I would rather take the last stroke from you than from my enemies. It is not worth while to live, for I have no friend, and soon shall have no possessions. My cause is forlorn, and my name is a byword, and now, by my own doing, I have lost my only love. Strike just here, and my blood will be an atonement to thee for my sin, and generations unborn will bless the hand which slew Claverhouse.
"Ye hesitate for a moment"--for she was holding the sword by the hilt, and her face was still clouded with gloom, although the fire was dying down. "Then I will use that moment, not to ask your pardon, for I judge you are not a woman to forgive--and neither should I be in your place--but to explain. I shall not speak of my love for you, for that now ye will not believe, nor of my shame in having received those evil thoughts for a moment into my heart. I have never known the bitterness of shame before, but I would fain tell how it happened, that the remembrance of me be less black after we have parted forever. Had I been in my natural state it had been impossible for me to doubt thee, Jean, and if I had seen thee sin before mine eyes, I would have thought it was another. But my mind has been distraught through weariness of the body on the long rides, and nights without sleep as I lay a-planning, and the desertion of friends in whom I trusted, and the refusals of men of whom I expected loyalty, and the humiliating helplessness before William's general, my old rival MacKay. I was almost mad. In the night-time, I think, I was mad altogether. But I had always one comfort, like a single star shining in a dark sky, and that was the faithfulness of my wife. When a cloud obscured that solitary light, then a frenzy passed into my blood. I ceased to reason, and according to the measure of my love was my foolish, groundless hate."
"Take back your sword, Dundee, for I am not now minded to use it. Five minutes ago it had been dangerous to give it me. If ye fall, it shall be by another hand than your wife's, and in another place than your home. We have said words to one another this night which neither of us will lightly pardon, for we are not of the pardoning kind. I do not feel as I did: my anger has turned into sorrow; the idol of my idolatry is broken--my fair model of chivalry--and now I can only gather together the pieces. Even while I hated you I was loving you--this is the contradiction of a woman's heart--and I knew that love of me had made you mad. Whatever happens, I will always remember that you loved me, but my dream has vanished--forever."