ngth, gathered up and
increased tenfold by horror and rage. Her eyes glared defiance, and her
presence there, in her white dress, with the crimson spots on each
cheek, and the fair hair scattered around her, was a presence of ominous
beauty, the hectic beauty of the fall. A feather's weight might have
turned the scale whether Gervase should totter forward and deal Diana a
deadly blow which should finish the misfortunes of that generation at
Ashpound, and brand Ashpound itself with the inhuman mark of an awful
crime; or whether he should melt in his misery, weep a man's scalding
tears, and bemoan their misery together. Diana's words were the
feather's weight: she broke God's unbearable silence, and by God's power
and mercy saved both. She cried out, not so much in self-defence, for
she was a daring, intrepid woman, as in righteous accusation, "You dare
not blame me, for you taught me, you brought me to it."

Through his undone condition he owned the truth of the accusation, and
the old spring of manliness in him welled up to protect the woman who
spoke the truth and impeached him justly of her ruin as well as his own.

"No, I dare not blame you. We are two miserable sinners, Die." And he
let his arms fall on the table and bowed his head over them.

He had spared her, he had not taunted her, and he had not called her Die
for many a day before. She put down the decanter and cowered back with
a sense of guilt which made her glowing beauty pale, fade, wither, like
the sere leaf washed by the heavy tears of a November night's rain.

When Gervase Norgate lifted up his bent head again, all the generosity
that had ever looked out of his comely face reappeared in its changed
features for a moment. "I have smitten you when you came and tried to
cure me, Die. And I cannot cure myself. I believe, before God, if I can
get no more drink, I shall go to-night; but I shall go soon, anyhow, no
mistake, and I ought to do something to save you, when I brought you to
it. So, do you see, Die? here go the drink and me together." And with
that he took up the decanters and dashed them, one after the other, on
the hearthstone, the wine and brandy running like life-blood in bubbling
red streams across the floor. He summoned Miles, and demanded his
keys--all the keys of closet and cellar in the house. And when the old
man, flustered and scared, did not venture to dispute his will, he
caught up the keys, cast them into the white core of the wood-f