of your influence into the opposite side of the
scale. I failed. It made no difference. I had done what I had done in
sheer despair: mere impulse--it didn't last. When the next temptation
tried me, I behaved like a scoundrel--as you say."

"I have said nothing," I answered shortly.

"Very well--as you _think,_ then. Did you suspect me at last--when we met
in the village, yesterday? Surely, even your eyes must have seen through
me on that occasion!"

I answered silently, by an inclination of my head. I had no wish to drift
into another quarrel. Sorely as he was presuming on my endurance, I
tried, in Lucilla's interests, to keep on friendly terms with him.

"You concealed it wonderfully well," he went on, "when I tried to find
out whether you had, or had not discovered me. You virtuous people are
not bad hands at deception, when it suits your interests to deceive. I
needn't tell you what my temptation was yesterday. The first look of her
eyes when they opened on the world; the first light of love and joy
breaking on her heavenly face--what madness to expect me to let that look
fall on another man, that light show itself to other eyes! No living
being, adoring her as I adored her, would have acted otherwise than I
did. I could have fallen down on my knees and worshipped Grosse, when he
innocently proposed to me to take the very place in the room which I was
determined to occupy. You saw what I had in my mind! You did your
best--and did it admirably--to defeat me. Oh, you pattern people--you can
be as shifty with your resources, when a cunning trick is to be played,
as the worst of us! You saw how it ended. Fortune stood my friend at the
eleventh hour; fortune can shine, like the sun, on the just and the
unjust! _I_ had the first look of her eyes! _I_ felt the first light of
love and joy in her face falling on _me! I_ have had her arms round me,
and her bosom on mine--"

I could endure it no longer.

"Open the door!" I said. "I am ashamed to be in the same room with you!"

"I don't wonder at it," he answered. "You may well be ashamed of me. I am
ashamed of myself."

There was nothing cynical in his tone, nothing insolent in his manner.
The same man who had just gloried in that abominable way, in his victory
over innocence and misfortune, now spoke and looked like a man who was
honestly ashamed of himself. If I could only have felt convinced that he
was mocking me, or playing the hypocrite with me, I should have know