soul now is like a dial to the sun.
But the clouds are there above, and I do not know what time it is in
life. When the clouds break--if they ever break--and the sun shines, the
dial will speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth--"

He paused, confused, for he had repeated the words of a witness taking
the oath in court.

"'So help me God!"' she finished the oath for him. Then, with a sudden
change of manner, she came to her feet with a spring. She did not quite
understand. She was, however, dimly conscious of the power she had over
his chivalrous mind: the power of the weak over the strong--the tyranny
of the defended over the defender. She was a woman tortured beyond
bearing; and she was fighting for her very life, mad with anguish as she
struggled.

"I do not understand you," she cried, with flashing eyes. "One minute
you say you do not believe in anything, and the next you say, 'So help
me God!'"

"Ah, no, you said that, Rosalie," he interposed gently.

"You said I was as magnanimous as God. You were laughing at me then,
mocking me, whose only fault is that I loved and trusted you. In the
wickedness of your heart you robbed me of happiness, you--"

"Don't--don't! Rosalie! Rosalie!" he exclaimed in shrinking protest.

That she had spoken to him as her deepest heart abhorred only increased
her agitated denunciation. "Yes, yes, in your mad selfishness, you did
not care for the poor girl who forgot all, lost all, and now--"
She stopped short at the sight of his white, awe stricken face. His
eye-glass seemed like a frost of death over an eye that looked upon
some shocking scene of woe. Yet he appeared not to see, for his fingers
fumbled on his waistcoat for the monocle--fumbled--vaguely, helplessly.
It was the realisation of a soul cast into the outer darkness. Her
abrupt silence came upon him like the last engulfing wave to a drowning
man--the final assurance of the end, in which there is quiet and the
deadly smother.

"Now--I know-the truth!" he said, in a curious even tone, different
from any she had ever heard from him. It was the old Charley Steele who
spoke, the Charley Steele in whom the intellect was supreme once more.
The judicial spirit, the inveterate intelligence which put justice
before all, was alive in him, almost rejoicing in its regained
governance. The new Charley was as dead as the old had been of late, and
this clarifying moment left the grim impression behind that the old