it before the curtain
fell.

A few nights later, as they sat together, Baird and Latimer spoke of this
incident and of the lecture it had followed upon.

"Repentance! Repentance!" Latimer said. "What led _you_ to dwell upon
repentance?"

"Thirty years of life," was Baird's answer. "Forty of them." He was
leaning forward gazing into the red-hot coals. "And after our talk," he
added, deliberately. "Margery."

Latimer turned and gazed at him.

Baird nodded.

"Yes," he said. "Her picture. Her innocent face and the soft, helpless
youth of it. Such young ignorance is helpless--helpless! If in any hour
of ruthlessness--or madness--a man had done such tenderness a wrong, what
repentance--_what_ repentance could undo?"

"None," said Latimer, and the words were a groan. "None--through all
eternity."

It was not a long silence which followed, but it seemed long to both of
them. A dead stillness fell upon the room. Baird felt as if he were
waiting for something. He knew he was waiting for something, though he
could not have explained to himself the sensation. Latimer seemed waiting
too--awaiting the power and steadiness to reach some resolve. But at
length he reached it. He sat upright and clutched the arms of his chair.
It was for support.

"Why not now?" he cried; "why not now? I trust you! I trust you! Let me
unburden my soul. I will try."

It was Baird's involuntary habit to sink into easy attitudes; the long,
supple form of his limbs and body lent themselves to grace and ease. But
he sat upright also, his hands unconsciously taking hold upon the arms of
his chair as his companion did.

For a moment the two gazed into each other's eyes, and the contrast
between their types was a strange one--the one man's face dark, sallow,
harsh, the other fine, sensitive, and suddenly awake with emotion.

"I trust you," said Latimer again. "I would not have confessed the truth
to any other living creature--upon the rack."

His forehead looked damp under his black locks.

"You would not have confessed the _truth_," Baird asked, in a hushed
voice, "about what?"

"Margery," answered Latimer. "Margery."

He saw Baird make a slight forward movement, and he went on monotonously.

"She did not die in Italy," he said. "She did not die lying smiling in
the evening sun."

"She--did not?" Baird's low cry was a thing of horror.

"She died," Latimer continued, in dull confession, "in a log cabin in the
mountains of North Carolina