ou have made a mistake, if you have done
that which in your great desire to aid me and my father seemed
justifiable, but which you now see was wrong, tell it to me, Bob dear, and
together we will try to undo it. We will try to find a way to atone. We
will give the millions to the last, last penny to those upon whom you have
brought misery. Father's loss will not matter. Together we will go to him
and tell him what we have done, what we have lived through, tell him of
our mistake, and in our agony he will forget his own. For such a horror
has my father of anything dishonourable that he will embrace his misery as
happiness when he knows that his teachings have enabled his daughter to
undo this great wrong. And then, Bob, we will be married, and you and I
and father and mother will be together, and be, oh, so happy, and we will
begin all over again."

"Beulah, stop; in the name of God, in the name of your love for me, don't
say another word. There is a limit to the capacity of a man to suffer,
even if he be a great, strong brute like myself, and, Beulah, I have
reached that limit. The day has been a hard one."

His voice softened and became as a tired child's.

"I must go out into the hustle of the street, into the din and sound, and
get down my nerves and get back my head. Then I shall be able to think
clear and true, and I will come back to you, and together we will see if I
have done anything that makes me unfit to touch the cheek and the hands
and the lips of the best and most beautiful woman God ever put upon earth.
Beulah, you know I would not deceive you to save my body from the fires
of this world, and my soul from the torture of the damned, and I promise
you that if I find that I have done wrong, what you call wrong, what your
father would call wrong, I will do what you say to atone."

He took her head between his hands, gently, reverently, and touching his
lips to her glorious golden hair, he went away.

Beulah Sands turned to me. "Please, Mr. Randolph, go with him. He is
soul-dazed. One can never tell what a heart sorely perplexed will prompt
its owner to do. Often in the night when I have got myself into a fever
from thinking of my father's situation, I have had awful temptations. The
agents of the devil seek the wretched when none of those they love are by.
I have often thought some of the blackest tragedies of the earth might
have been averted if there had been a true friend to stand at the wrung
one's el