"You need not stop because she is my sister."

He felt he had her permission, and he permitted himself a glance of
admiration for the depths to which she could go without being daunted.
Here was evil courage worthy of his teaching. She seemed to him beautiful
enough and daring enough for Satan himself to admire.

"And may I have the pleasure of knowing that I would by so doing serve my
lady in some wise?"

She drooped her shameless eyes and murmured guardedly, "Perhaps." Then she
swept him a coquettish glance that meant they understood one another.

"Then I shall feel well rewarded," he said gallantly, and bowing with more
than his ordinary flattery of look bade her good day and went out.

CHAPTER XXII

David stumbled blindly out the door and down the street. His one thought
was to get to his room at the tavern and shut the door. He had an
important appointment that morning, but it passed completely from his
mind. He met one or two men whom he knew, but he did not see them, and
passed them swiftly without a glance of recognition. They said one to
another, "How absorbed he is in the great themes of the world!" but David
passed on in his pain and misery and humiliation and never knew they were
near him.

He went to the room that had been his since he had reached New York, and
fastening the door against all intrusion fell upon his knees beside the
bed, and let the flood-tide of his sorrow roll over him. Not even when
Kate had played him false on his wedding morning had he felt the pain that
now cut into his very soul. For now there was mingled with it the agony of
consciousness of sin. He had sinned against heaven, against honor and
love, and all that was pure and good. He was just like any bad man. He had
yielded to sudden temptation and taken another man's wife in his arms and
kissed her! That the woman had been his by first right, and that he loved
her: that she had invited the kiss, indeed pleaded for it, his sensitive
conscience told him in no wise lessened the offense. He had also caused
her whom he loved to sin. He was a man and knew the world. He should have
shielded her against herself. And yet as he went over and over the whole
painful scene through which he had just passed his soul cried out in agony
and he felt his weakness more and more. He had failed, failed most
miserably. Acted like any coward!

The humiliation of it was unspeakable. Could any sorrow be like u