me
for the giving of it; would go on hating me, I thought, to all eternity;
but she would never take her freedom back again, save at a dead man's
hands.

It was thus that each fresh scanning of the prison wall that shut me in
this dungeon of dishonor fetched me once and again to this one
sally-port of death. And when it came to this; that I had searched in
vain for other outlet, you will not think it strange that I sat down in
spirit at this postern to see if I might open it with my own hands.

It was not love of life that made me hesitate. At two-score years he
who has lived at all has lived his best; and if he live beyond the
turning point of youthful ardor he must beg the grace of younger men to
linger yet a little longer on the stage which once was his and now is
theirs.

No, it was not any love of life for life's own sake that held me back.
'Twas rather that the Ireton blood is linked up with that thing we call
a conscience, a heritage from those simple-hearted ancestors to whom the
suicide was a soul accurst--a soul impenitent, whose very outer husk of
flesh and bones they used to bury at the crossing of the ways, with a
sharpened stake to pinion it.

'Twas this ancestral conscience made me cowardly; and when the sight of
my father's sword--Darius had rescued and restored it to its place upon
the chimney-breast--would set me thinking of the Israelitish king, and
how, when all was lost, he fell upon his blade and died, this horror of
the suicide came to give me pause.

Besides, that way to right the double wrong was not so clear as it might
seem. As matters stood, my living for the present was Margery's best
safeguard. Till she became my widow and my heir-at-law, the mercenary
baronet would play his cards to win her honorably. I doubted not he'd
make hot love to her; but while she stayed a wife, and was not yet a
widow, he'd keep his passion decently in bounds, if only for the better
compassing of his end.

But from this horn of the dilemma I slipped to fall upon the other. If
my living on as Margery's husband was her safety for the time, it was an
offering of idol-meats upon the altar of my dear lad's friendship. What
would he think of me? How could I go about to make it plain that I had
robbed him for his own honor's sake?--that it was not I but fate that
was to blame?

These questions came up answerless, like deep-sea plummets where no
bottom is. I saw the way no farther on than this; that I must go
s