ish to
wed. But why should we recall that dreadful day and night? You won the
victory. You, with your superior finesse, triumphed over the African as
your race has always triumphed over mine. I demanded love or death. You
dissuaded me from both. And the next day I permitted you to depart, and
saw vanish with you the last hope of happiness I shall ever feel."

The rich voice of the speaker broke completely at the close, but the
girl who heard him seemed to feel no sympathy for his distress.

"Always yourself!" she exclaimed. "Do you ever think of the life you
left to _me_--a life hardly more kind than the murder you contemplated.
Before you opened the portals that you had meant for my tomb you made me
swear never to reveal where I had passed those hours. Never, no matter
what the provocation, was I to utter one word to implicate you in the
tragedy that had ruined two households. _You_ were the one to be
protected--_I_ the one to suffer! Had it not been for the sacrifice to
my reputation in being found there with you dead--no explanation being
possible from my closed lips--I would have accepted the alternative and
swallowed the poison rather than live to bear what I do to-day!"

Weil closed his eyes again. His brain was swimming.

"And you are sure," asked the negro, after a pause, "that you have not
violated that promise? You can still swear that you have never, even by
a hint, given the least cause of suspicion against me?"

"Never!" said the girl. "I consider my oath binding, notwithstanding the
manner in which it was obtained. You may live in what peace your
conscience allows you, free at least from that fear."

The negro evidently believed her, for he heaved a sigh of relief.

"Well, good-by," he said.

"Good-by," she replied. "And--you are not to come again, remember. There
is nothing to be gained from another meeting between us. If--if you want
money--I can send it to you."

He lifted his head rather proudly at the last suggestion.

"I do not want any," he said. "I am not low enough for that. I took the
sum from you to go to France, because I hoped--in my infatuation--that I
could make myself something that you would not despise. If I had wanted
money I could have got thousands out of your father, and I could still,
notwithstanding the pretence of those men that they wrote the signatures
I saw him forge. No, I mean to give you back what I had from you, if
ever I can compose my mind enough to go to work an