ed, horrified, and he knew it and found pleasure of a
certain sort in the knowledge. When a man has done violence to his own
best impulses, the thing that comes nearest to the holy joy of penitence
is the unholy joy of making somebody else sorry for him. There were
unmistakable tears in her voice when she said:

"Tom, why have you told me this--this unspeakable thing?"

"Why--I guess it was because I wanted to ask you how you supposed the
Mr. Henniker kind of men square such things with their conscience; or
don't they have any conscience?"

"That is _not_ the reason," she faltered.

"You are right," he rejoined quickly. "It was diabolism pure and
unstrained. I had hurt myself, and I wanted to pass it along--to hurt
some one else. But it is too cold to keep you standing here. Won't you
come in again?"

"No; I must go home." And she went down the broad steps.

He drew her arm through his and walked with her, down one grassy slope
and up the other. At the manor-house steps he found at last sufficient
grace to say: "It was a currish thing to do; will you forgive me,
Ardea?"

"I don't know," she said, in a tone that thrilled him curiously. "Such
things are hard to forgive. I don't mean your slapping me in the face
with it, that is nothing. But to know that you have gone so far aside
... that you have sunk your manhood and all the promise of it...."

He nodded perfect intelligence. "I know; it's hell, Ardea. I've been
frizzling in it for the past six months, more or less; ever since I came
home with the one sole, single determination to climb out of the panic
ditch if I had to make steps of dead bodies or lost souls. I'm doing it,
and I'm paying the price. Sometimes I can find it in my heart to curse
the mistaken mother-love that gave me to eat of the fruit of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil. I'm pagan in all else, but I can't sin
like a pagan. Why is it? Why can't I be a smug, peaceful, sound-sleeping
scoundrel like other men?"

She was standing on the step above him, as she had stood on the other
side of the two dew-wet lawns.

"I have a theory," she rejoined, "but you wouldn't accept it. You'll
never be able to do wrong without paying for it. Is it worth while to
try?"

"Nothing is worth while--nothing at all. I don't mean that I'm going to
quit; I shall doubtless go on trampling and grinding the face of the
poor, and the rich, if they come in my way. But at the end of the ends I
shall curse God an