ps before. But she did it, glad to prove
her penitence by any test he might apply. Tears often blinded her,
uncontrollable emotion often arrested her; and more than once she turned
on him a beseeching look, which asked as plainly as words, "Must I go
on?"

Intent on learning all, Moor was unconscious of the trial he imposed,
unaware that the change in himself was the keenest reproach he could
have made, and still with a persistency as gentle as inflexible, he
pursued his purpose to the end. When great drops rolled down her cheeks
he dried them silently; when she paused, he waited till she calmed
herself; and when she spoke he listened with few interruptions but a
question now and then. Occasionally a sudden flush of passionate pain
swept across his face, as some phrase, implying rather than expressing
Warwick's love or Sylvia's longing, escaped the narrator's lips, and
when she described their parting on that very spot, his eye went from
her to the hearth her words seemed to make desolate, with a glance she
never could forget. But when the last question was answered, the last
appeal for pardon brokenly uttered, nothing but the pale pride remained;
and his voice was cold and quiet as his mien.

"Yes, it is this which has baffled and kept me groping in the dark so
long, for I wholly trusted what I wholly loved."

"Alas, it was that very confidence that made my task seem so necessary
and so hard. How often I longed to go to you with my great trouble as I
used to do with lesser ones. But here you would suffer more than I; and
having done the wrong, it was for me to pay the penalty. So like many
another weak yet willing soul, I tried to keep you happy at all costs."

"One frank word before I married you would have spared us this. Could
you not foresee the end and dare to speak it, Sylvia?"

"I see it now, I did not then, else I would have spoken as freely as I
speak to-night. I thought I had outlived my love for Adam; it seemed
kind to spare you a knowledge that would disturb your friendship, so
though I told the truth, I did not tell it all. I thought temptations
came from without; I could withstand such, and I did, even when it wore
Adam's shape. This temptation came so suddenly, seemed so harmless,
generous and just, that I yielded to it unconscious that it was one.
Surely I deceived myself as cruelly as I did you, and God knows I have
tried to atone for it when time taught me my fatal error."

"Poor child, it was t