--and I was crushed
beneath the burden of my sins."

After a pause he raised a drawn face and went on to tell of his
meeting, the year before, with Barney Bill, of whom he had lost track
when the prison doors had closed behind him. It had been in one of his
Fish Palaces where Bill was eating. They recognized each other. Barney
Bill told his tale: how he had run across Polly Kegworthy after a dozen
years' wandering; how, for love of his old friend, he had taken Paul,
child of astonishing promise, away from Bludston--

"Do you remember, sonny, when I left you alone that night and went to
the other side of the brickfield? It was to think it out," said Bill.
"To think out my duty as a man."

Paul nodded. He was listening, with death in his heart. The whole
fantastic substructure of his life had been suddenly kicked away, and
his life was an inchoate ruin. Gone was the glamour of romance in which
since the day of the cornelian heart he had had his essential being. Up
to an hour ago he had never doubted his mysterious birth. No real
mother could have pursued an innocent child with Polly Kegworthy's
implacable hatred. His passionate repudiation of her had been a
cardinal article of his faith. On the other hand, the prince and
princess theory he had long ago consigned to the limbo of childish
things; but the romance of his birth, the romance of his high destiny,
remained a vital part of his spiritual equipment. His looks, his
talents, his temperament, his instincts, his dreams had been
irrefutable confirmations. His mere honesty, his mere integrity, had
been based on this fervent and unshakable creed. And now it had gone.
No more romance. No more glamour. No more Vision Splendid now faded
into the light of common and sordid day. Outwardly listening, his gay,
mobile face turned to iron, he lived in a molten intensity of thought,
his acute brain swiftly coordinating the ironical scraps of history. He
was the son of Polly Kegworthy. So far he was unclean; but hitherto her
blood had not manifested itself in him. He was the son of this violent
and pathetic fanatic, this ex-convict; he had his eyes, his refined
face; perhaps he inherited from him the artistic temperament--he
recalled grimly the daubs on the man's walls, and his purblind gropings
toward artistic self-expression; and all this--the Southern
handsomeness, and Southern love of colour, had come from his Sicilian
grandmother, the nameless drab, with bright yellow handker