me your applause as I depart," he answered sadly, and her
eyes fell before his eloquent glance. "In those early days rage and
hate, and the maddest desire for justice, sustained me. That woman had
only one wish in life: to find, rob, and murder the man who had befooled
her worse than she had tricked him. I made war on that man. I hated
Horace Endicott as a weak fool. He had fallen lowest of all his honest,
able, stern race. I beat him first into hiding, then into slavery, and
at last into annihilation. I studied to annihilate him, and I did it by
raising Arthur Dillon in his place. I am now Arthur Dillon. I think,
feel, act, speak, dream like that Arthur Dillon which I first imagined.
When you knew me first, Honora, I was playing a part. I am no longer
acting. I am the man whom the world knows as Arthur Dillon."

"I can see that, and it seems more wonderful than any dream of romance.
You a Puritan are more Irish than the Irish, more Catholic than the
Catholics, more Dillon than the Dillons. Oh, how can this be?"

"Don't let it worry you," he said grimly. "Just accept the fact and me.
I never lived until Horace Endicott disappeared. He was a child of
fortune and a lover of ease and pleasure. His greatest pain had been a
toothache. His view of life had been a boy's. When I stepped on this
great stage I found myself for the first time in the very current of
life. Suffering ate my heart out, and I plunged into that current to
deaden the agony. I found myself by accident a leader of a poor people
who had fled from injustice at home to suffer a mean persecution here. I
was thrown in with the great men of the hour, and found a splendid
opponent in a member of the Endicott family, Livingstone. I saw the very
heart of great things, and the look enchanted me.

"You know how I worked for my friends, for your father, for the people,
for every one and everything that needed help. For the first time I saw
into the heart of a true friend. Monsignor helped me, carried me
through, stood by me, directed me. For the first time I saw into the
heart of innocence and sanctity, deep down, the heart of that blessed
boy, Louis. For the first time I looked into the heart of a patriot, and
learned of the love which can endure, not merely failure, but absolute
and final disappointment, and still be faithful. I became an orator, an
adventurer, an enthusiast. The Endicott who could not speak ten words
before a crowd, the empty-headed stroller who c