huddering breath. He spoke. "Jacqueline!"

She moved slightly. "Yes, Lewis."

"The night is quiet, after the storm. He lies at rest beside the stream.
This morning he will be found, lifted tenderly, lamented, mourned. It is
not a gruesome place. I remember trees and fluttering birds. He
sleeps--he sleeps--like Duncan he sleeps well at last. Is he to be so
pitied?"

She moaned, "Yes--but you also, you also! Oh, break, break!"

"Listen, Jacqueline. It lacks but an hour of dawn. When it is day, you
may give me up. Rouse Joab and send for the sheriff and your uncles and
for Fairfax Cary. I will dress and await them in the library. Indeed,
you may do it now--there's no need to wait for dawn."

She rose from her chair and went the length of the room, resting at
last, with raised arms and covered face, against the farthest window. He
spoke on. "If all thought alike, Jacqueline, if all saw action and
consequence with one vision--but we do not so, no, not on this earth!
You and I are sundered there. Perhaps it is to my shame that it is
so,--I cannot tell. What you asked for this afternoon, that confession,
that decision, that accord with justice and acceptance of penalty, I
cannot give freely and of conviction, Jacqueline. Why did you think I
had that exaltation of mind? I have it not; no, nor one man in five
hundred thousand! The man I--murdered--perhaps possessed it; indeed, I
think that he did. But I--I do not own it, nor can I see matters with
another's vision. I see a struggle to prevent disgrace and disaster, to
retrieve and hold an endangered standing-room--a struggle determined and
legitimate. I am capable of making it. But though I'll avow that another
man's vision transcends mine, I'll dispute with him the power of loving!
I love you with a passion as deep, strong, and abiding as if I, too,
walked in that rarer air. I am of the earth and rooted in the earth, but
I love you utterly. If you want this thing, I will give it to you. It
was unmanly of me to say but now, 'You may do this, you may do that, and
I will not lift a finger to prevent you.' I will not leave it to you,
Jacqueline. I will awaken Joab and send him with a note to your uncles."

He moved toward the door, but before he could reach it his wife was
before him, her weight thrown against him, her raised hands thrusting
him back to the hearth. She shook her head, and her long hair shadowed
her; she strove for utterance, but could find only a strangled "No