y that I overreached myself; and walked into this trap with my eyes
open, and for my own objects? Do you think I shall ever be thought
better of; for getting caught here? I don't parade high moral views like
our friend French. I won't cant about virtue. But I do claim that in
my public life I have tried to do right. Will you do me the justice to
think so?"

Madeleine still struggled to prevent herself from being drawn into
indefinite promises of sympathy with this man. She would keep him at
arm's length whatever her sympathies might be. She would not pledge
herself to espouse his cause. She turned upon him with an effort, and
said that her thoughts, now or at any time, were folly and nonsense, and
that the consciousness of right-doing was the only reward any public man
had a right to expect.

"And yet you are a hard critic, Mrs. Lee. If your thoughts are what
you say, your words are not. You judge with the judgment of abstract
principles, and you wield the bolts of divine justice. You look on and
condemn, but you refuse to acquit. When I come to you on the verge of
what is likely to be the fatal plunge of my life, and ask you only for
some clue to the moral principle that ought to guide me, you look on and
say that virtue is its own reward. And you do not even say where virtue
lies."

"I confess my sins," said Madeleine, meekly and despondently; "life is
more complicated than I thought."

"I shall be guided by your advice," said Ratcliffe; "I shall walk into
that den of wild beasts, since you think I ought. But I shall hold you
to your responsibility. You cannot refuse to see me through dangers you
have helped to bring me into."

"No, no!" cried Madeleine, earnestly; "no responsibility. You ask more
than I can give."

Ratcliffe looked at her a moment with a troubled and careworn face. His
eyes seemed deep sunk in their dark circles, and his voice was pathetic
in its intensity. "Duty is duty, for you as well as for me. I have a
right to the help of all pure minds. You have no right to refuse it. How
can you reject your own responsibility and hold me to mine?"

Almost as he spoke, he rose and took his departure, leaving her no time
to do more than murmur again her ineffectual protest. After he was gone,
Mrs.

Lee sat long, with her eyes fixed on the fire, reflecting upon what he
had said. Her mind was bewildered by the new suggestions which Ratcliffe
had thrown out. What woman of thirty, with aspirations for the