things. It seemed that he must always have been guilty of
that thing; that in all his life to come he must always be guilty of
it. There had been no change in him to make him capable of it, to make
him wish it; there had been no later change in him by which he would
undo it. It seemed that his guilt was something which must have begun
away back in the formation of his character, and which would persist
as long as he was the being that he was. There was no beginning of it.
There was no way that it might ever end.

And, now that he remembered, Ruth Lansing had seen that guilt, too.
She had seen it in his eyes before ever the thought had taken shape in
his mind.

What had she seen? What was that thing written so clear in his eyes
that she could read and tell him of it that day on the road from
French Village?

He would go to her and ask her. She should tell him what was that
thing she had seen. He would make her tell. He would have it from
her!

But, no. Where was the use? It would only bring them to that whole,
impossible, bewildering business of the confessional. And he did not
want to hear any more of that. His heart was sick of it. It had made
him suffer enough. And he did not doubt now that Ruth had suffered
equally, or maybe more, from it.

Where could he go? He must tell this thing. He _must_ talk of it to
some one! That resistless, irrepressible impulse for confession, that
call of the lone human soul for confidence, was upon him. He must find
some other soul to share with him the burden of this conviction. He
must find some one who would understand and to whom he could speak.

Jeffrey Whiting was not subtle. He could not have analysed what this
craving meant. He only knew that it was very real, that his soul was
staggering alone and blind under the weight of this thing.

There was one man who would understand. The man who had looked upon
the faces of life and death these many years, the man of strange
comings and goings, the Bishop who had set him on the way of all this,
and who from what he had said in his house in Alden, that day so long
ago when all this began, may have foreseen this very thing, the man
who had heard Rafe Gadbeau cry out his guilt; that man would
understand. He would go to him.

He wrote a note which his mother would find in the morning, and
slipping quietly out of the house he saddled his horse for the ride to
Lowville.

"I came because I had to come," Jeffrey began, when the Bisho