l, walking again through the crowded place like a man in a dream.
Men greeted him, but for once he gave no sign of seeing them. She heard
his footstep on the stair. When he reached her door he almost fell
against it in the opening, and staggered as he entered the room as if
his self-control had just lasted so far. He knelt down by one of the
fashionable marble-topped tables with which he had graced her room, and,
like an ill-conditioned soul, burst into tears and broken complaints.

"But I cannot do it," he gasped. "I cannot."

In her hour of miserable waiting Susannah had thought of many things
that might occur, and nerved herself to meet them, but this distemper of
soul, this failure of will in the man who had been undaunted through
years of persecuting torture, was so wholly unexpected that she stood
aghast.

He clenched his hands as they lay helpless on the white table. "O Lord!"
he cried, and she could not tell from the tone whether the words were
oath or prayer. "O Lord, I cannot let her go." His thick tears muffled
his voice, and still again and again during the paroxysm she caught the
words as if reiterated in choking anger, "O Lord, I cannot."

His tears, however evil their source, laid hold of her woman's
sensibility; she was no longer a critical observer. She no longer set
aside his strange inward conflict as a delusion of madness. She
participated in his consciousness so far as to think that she was
actually witnessing the despair of a soul repulsing an opportunity of
righteousness, and yet not so far dead as not to know its worth. She
tried to speak, but found herself, as at other times, so affected by
his overlapping emotion that she was trembling and had neither courage
nor voice.

Smith lifted his head, looking with terror into vacant spaces of the dim
room, as if following with his eyes some menacing form. He whined
piteously. "I have purposed to be faithful"; he put up his hand as if to
ward off a blow. "Thou knowest! thou knowest!" His voice was like a
whispering shriek. The terror of his face and gestures was appalling to
see.

Susannah was infected with fear of an apparition so evidently visible to
him. Her mind swung, as it were, out of material limitations. She was
overcome with the belief that a third person was with them, and her
heart went out in gratitude to that mysterious other for taking her
part.

But the gilt clock on the marble mantelshelf ticked on; Susannah felt
herself aware