lls her. With a start she brings herself back to the
present moment, turns to look at him, and, looking slowly, learns the
truth. The final crash has come, her fears are realized; she has lost
him forever.

"What is it, Philip? what word have you used?" she asks, with nervous
vehemence, as though only half comprehending; "why do you look at me so
strangely? I have said nothing,--nothing that should make you shrink
from me."

"You have said enough,"--with a shiver, "too much; and your face said
more. I desire you never to speak to me on the subject again."

"What! you will not even hear me?"

"No; I am only thankful I have found you out in time."

"Say rather for this lucky chance I have afforded you of breaking off a
detested engagement," cries she, with sudden bitterness. "Hypocrite!
how long have you been awaiting it?"

"You are talking folly, Marcia. What reason have I ever given you that
you should make me such a speech? But for what has just now
happened,--but for your insinuations----"

"Ay,"--slowly,--"you shrink from hearing your thoughts put into words."

"Not _my_ thoughts," protests he, vehemently.

"No?" searchingly, drawing a step nearer him. "Are you _sure_?
Have you never wished our grandfather dead?"

"I may have wished it," confesses he, reluctantly, as though compelled
to frankness, "but to compass my wish--to----"

"If you have wished it you have murdered," returns she, with
conviction. "You have craved his death: what is that but unuttered
crime? There is little difference; it is but one step the more in the
same direction. And I,--in what way am I the greater sinner? I have but
said aloud what you whisper to your heart."

"Be silent," cries he, fiercely. "All your sophistry fails to make me a
partner in your guilt."

"I am the honester of the two," she goes on, rapidly, unheeding his
anger. "As long as the accursed thing is unspoken, you see no harm in
it; once it makes itself heard, you start and sicken, because it hurts
your tender susceptibilities. Yet hear me, Philip." Suddenly changing
her tone of passionate scorn to one of entreaty as passionate, "Do not
cast me off for a few idle words. They have done no harm. Let us be as
we were."

"Impossible," replies he coldly, unloosing her fingers from his arm,
all the dislike and loathing of which he is capable compressed into the
word. "You have destroyed my trust in you."

A light that means despair flashes across Marcia's face as