nds, and habitually refrains from acting according
to knowledge and understanding. It is the record of the follies of such
people which has built up the world's wisdom. From that record we have
learned amongst many other things that the fool of understanding has one
eternal refuge from himself which he seeks with a full knowledge of the
fact that the shelter it affords is illusory, and that the path by which
it leads him can only conduct him to greater dangers than those from
which he is striving to escape. It is too late to go back now, quoth the
fool; the business must be gone through to the end. Thus if this brief
diagnosis be of any value, the root of folly is to be found in the decay
of will. Few men had reason to hold this belief more firmly than Paul
Armstrong, and yet even now, when whatever was best in his own nature
was more seriously engaged than it had ever been before, he went on to
the consummation of a most undoubted and most cruel wrong, on the poor
pretence that every stage he passed towards it made the passage of the
next stage inevitable.

If ever it had seemed clear to him that it was too late to retire it
seemed clearer now, and indeed he had so involved himself that it
became to him alike and equally criminal to retreat or to advance. But
by-and-by a solace for his miseries brought a solution of perplexity.
Since he had taken so tremendous a responsibility upon himself, since
there was now no escape from it without an act of brutality at the mere
thought of which his heart revolted, there grew up within him such a
resolve and such a sense of protective tenderness as had been hitherto
impossible for him. Poor little Madge was to be victimized, but the _via
dolorosa_ which she would tread unendingly should at least be strewn
with flowers, and the victim herself should be beautifully garlanded.
His life should be one act of worship in return for her self-sacrifice.
His devotion should offer such a challenge to the censure of the world
that all reproach should shrink away ashamed. There never had been so
complete an atonement as he would offer.

The nauseous pill of self-reproach was so thickly sugared and gilded by
this inspiration that in a while he was not only able to take it without
making wry faces, but with an actual sense of relish and self-approval.
This was naturally a good deal dashed by the coming interview with
Madge's mother, about whose unknown personality there began to cluster
some se