"You have punished me for a thing that was not my fault," he
continued. "I destroyed it--the accursed paper, and--"

"And by destroying it you gave me back to the Loring estate," she
said, quietly. All the passion had burned itself out; she spoke
wearily and without emotion. "That is, I have become again, the
property of my half sister, my father's daughter! Are the brutal
possibilities of your social institution so very far in the past?"

He could only stare at her; the horror of it was all too sickening,
and that man who was dying in the other room had caused it all; he had
moved them as puppets in the game of life, a malignant Fate, who had
made all this possible.

"Now, will you go?" she asked, pleadingly. "You may trust me now; I
have told you all."

But he did not seem to hear her; only that one horrible thought of
what she was to him beat against his brain and dwarfed every other
consideration.

"And you--married me, knowing this?"

"I married you because I knew it," she said, despairingly. "I thought
you and Matthew Loring equally guilty--equally deserving of
punishment. I fought against my own feelings--my own love for you--"

"Love!"

"Love--love always! I loved you in Paris, when I thought hate was all
you deserved from me. I waited three years. I told myself it had been
only a girlish fancy--not love! I pledged myself to work for the union
of these states and against the cause championed by Kenneth McVeigh
and Matthew Loring; for days and nights, weeks and months, I have
worked for my mother's people and against the two men whose names were
always linked together in my remembrance. The thought became a
monomania with me. Well, you know how it is ended! Every plan against
you became hateful to me from the moment I heard your voice again. But
the plans had to go on though they were built on my heart. As for the
marriage, I meant to write you after I had left the country, and tell
you who you had given your name to. Then"--and all of despair was in
her voice--"then I learned the truth too late. I heard your words when
that paper was given to you here, and I loved you. I realized that I
had never ceased to love you; that I never should!"

"The woman who is my--wife!" he muttered. "Oh, God!--"

"No one need ever know that," she said earnestly. "I will go away,
unless you give me over to the authorities as the spy. For the wrong I
have done you I will make any atonement--any expiation--"

"There i