g of
the storm of passion, which even his will could no longer restrain.
But it was the whole storm, for he went no further. It was Diane who
spoke next. Her cheeks had assumed an ashen hue, and her lips trembled
so that she could scarcely frame her words.

"What do you mean?" she gasped.

"Tut! Your crazy obstinacy drives me to it," her father answered
impatiently, but with perfect control. "Oh, you need have no fear.
There is no legal shame to you. But there is that which will hit you
harder, I think."

"Father! What are you saying?"

Something of the man's meaning was growing upon her. Old hints and
innuendoes against her mother were recalled by his words. Her throat
parched while she watched the relentless face of this man who was
still her father.

"Saying? You know the story of my blindness. You know I spent three
years visiting nearly every eye-doctor in Europe. But what you don't
know, and shall know, is that I returned home to Jamaica at the end of
that time to find myself the father of a three-days'-old baby girl."
The man's teeth were clenched, rage and pain distorted his face,
rendering his sightless stare a hideous thing. "Yes," he went on, but
now more to himself, "I returned home to that, and in time to hear the
last words your mother uttered in life; in time to feel--feel her
death-struggles." He mouthed his words with unmistakable relish, and
relapsed into silence.

Diane fell back with a bitter cry. The cry roused her father.

"Well?" he continued. "You'll give this man up--now?"

For some minutes there was no answer. The girl sat like a statue
carved in dead white stone; and the expression of her face was as
stony as the mould of her features. Her blood was chilled; her brain
refused its office; and her heart--it was as though that fount of life
lay crushed within her bosom. Even the man lying sick on the bed
beside her had no meaning for her.

"Well?" her father demanded impatiently. "You are going to give
Tresler up now?"

She heard him this time. With a rush everything came to her, and a
feeling of utter helplessness swept over her. Oh, the shame of it!
Suddenly she flung forward on the bed and sobbed her heart out beside
the man she must give up. He had been the one bright ray in the dull
gray of her life. His love, come so quickly, so suddenly, to her had
leavened the memory of her unloved years. Their recollection had been
thrust into the background to give place to the sunshine of