he tone he was taking with me. "What right have you to
judge my conduct?"

He looked at me with a kind of vacant surprise.

"_Have_ I been judging your conduct?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Perhaps I was thinking, if you had seen my infatuation in time you
might have checked it in time. No!" he exclaimed, before I could answer
him. "Nothing could have checked it--nothing will cure it but my death.
Let us try to agree. I beg your pardon if I have offended you. I am
willing to take a just view of your conduct. Will you take a just view of
mine?"

I tried hard to take a just view. Though I resented his manner of
speaking to me, I nevertheless secretly felt for him, as I have
confessed. Still I could not forget that he had attempted to attract to
himself Lucilla's first look, on the day when she tried her sight--that
he had personated his brother to Lucilla that very morning--that he had
suffered his brother to go away heart-broken, a voluntary exile from all
that he held dear. No! I could feel for him, but I could _not_ take a
just view of him. I sat down, and said nothing.

He returned to the question between us; treating me with the needful
politeness, when he spoke next. For all that, he alarmed me, by what he
now said, as he had not alarmed me yet.

"I repeat what I have already told you," he proceeded. "I am no longer
accountable for what I do. If I know anything of myself, I believe it
will be useless to trust me in the future. While I am capable of speaking
the truth, let me tell it. Whatever happens at a later time--remember
this, I have honestly made a clean breast of it to-night."

"Stop!" I cried. "I don't understand your reckless way of talking. Every
man is accountable for what he does."

He checked me there by an impatient wave of his hand.

"Keep your opinion; I don't dispute it. You will see; you will
see.--Madame Pratolungo, the day when we had that private talk of ours in
the rectory summer-house, marks a memorable date in my calendar. My last
honest struggle to be true to my poor Oscar ended with that day. The
efforts I have made since then have been little better than mere
outbreaks of despair. They have done nothing to help me against the
passion that has become the one feeling and the one misery of my life.
Don't talk of resistance. All resistance stops at a certain point. Since
the time I have told you of, _my_ resistance has reached its limits. You
have heard how I struggled against temptation,