will try to tell you--a physical
fear of you, of your touch, of your clasp, a fear such as an animal
might feel towards the master who had beaten it. I tremble then at
your approach. When you are near me I feel cold, oh! so cold and--and
anxious; perhaps I ought to say apprehensive. Oh, I am hurting you!"

I suppose I must have winced at her words, and she is quick to observe.

"Go on," I said; "do not spare me. Tell me everything. It is madness
indeed; but we may kill it, when we both know it."

"Oh, if we could!" she cried, with a poignancy which was heart-breaking
to hear. "If we could!"

"Do you doubt our ability?" I said, trying to be patient and calm. "You
are unreasoning, like all women. Be sensible for a moment. You do me a
wrong in cherishing these feelings. I have the capacity for cruelty in
me. I may have been--I have been--cruel in the past, but never to you.
You have no right to treat me as you have done lately. If you examine
your feelings, and compare them with facts, you will see their
absurdity."

"But," she interposed, with a woman's fatal quickness, "that will not do
away with their reality."

"It must. Look into their faces until they fade like ghosts, seen only
between light and darkness. They are founded upon nothing; they are bred
without father or mother; they are hysterical; they are wicked. Think a
little of me. You are not going to be conquered by a chimera, to allow a
phantom created by your imagination to ruin the happiness that has been
so beautiful. You will not do that! You dare not!"

She only answered:

"If I can help it."

A passionate anger seized me, a fury at my impotence against this child.
I pushed her almost roughly from my arms.

"And I have married this woman!" I cried bitterly. I got up.

Margot had ceased crying now, and her face was very white and calm; it
looked rigid in the faint candle-light that shone across the bed.

"Do not be angry," she said. "We are controlled by something inside of
us; there are powers in us that we cannot fight against."

"There is nothing we cannot fight against," I said passionately. "The
doctrine of predestination is the devil's own doctrine. It is the
doctrine set up by the sinner to excuse his sin; it is the coward's
doctrine. Understand me, Margot, I love you, but I am not a weak fool.
There must be an end of this folly. Perhaps you are playing with me,
acting like a girl, testing me. Let us have no more of it."

She said: