by Heaven.
Great God! how I understood your story of her prayers. And it was I--it
was I!"

He turned on Latimer with a kind of ferocity.

"You have crucified me!" he cried out. "Let that comfort you. You have
crucified me by her side, that I might see her die--that I might hear her
low little piteous voice--that I might see her throes and terrors. And I
love her--and remember every look of her loving child's eyes--every curve
and quiver of her mouth. Through all the years I have been crucified,
knowing I had earned all that I felt."

Latimer moved across the room, putting the table between them. He went
and stood by the mantel. A murmur of impatient applause from the audience
came through the door.

"You loved her," he said, standing with his hand holding something in his
breast. "And I loved you. She was the one brightness of my life when I
was a boy and you were its one brightness when I was a man. You gave me a
reason for living. I am not the kind of man to be my own reason. I
needn't tell you what you have been to me. You were the one man on earth
I dared to confess to. I knew you would understand and that you knew what
pity was."

Baird groaned aloud. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his
handkerchief as he listened.

"I knew you were the one man I could trust. I could _trust_ you. I could
confide in you, and talk to you about Margery. One day you said to me
that you had learned to love her and that we might have been brothers."

"When I was left free I had but one thought," Baird said, "to return to
her--to atone, so far as atonement could be--to pray of her upon my
knees. But she was dead--she was dead!"

"Yes, she was dead, and I had no one left to talk to about her. You were
my one comfort and support and friend."

He drew his hand out of his breast. Baird started and then stood quite
quiet. The hand held a pistol.

"Are you going to kill me?" he said. "You know I asked you that once
before."

"No," said Latimer, "I am not going to kill you. I am going to kill the
man who loved you, and found you his reason for living. It's all done
with!"

"No! no!" shrieked Baird, and he hurled himself across the table like a
madman. "No! You are not! No, Latimer! No! God! No!"

They were struggling together--Baird hung to his arm and tried to drag
the pistol from his grasp. But it was no use; Latimer's long, ill-hung
limbs were the stronger. His fixed face did not change, but he wrenched
himself fr