I insist on doing it now and getting it over
with!"

"Don't! don't! It will _never_ be over with!" gulped the boy.

"I'm _through_!" cried Mr. Montagu. "_Who_ are you? _What_ are you?"

At the determined finality of the voice the boy quivered like a helpless
thing, and his stuttering ejaculations came as if shaken out of him by
the shivering of his body.

"Wh--_who_ am I?"

"_Yes!_"

"Wh--_what_ am I?"

"_Yes!_"

Never yet had he been so awful as in the torment and majesty that gazed
like fate at Henry Montagu now, and the frightful fire of the eyes
seemed to dry up the tears on his cheeks at its first flare of accusing
righteousness.

"_I'm the child that you and your wife refused to have!_"

As the aghast man shrank back before his blighting fury, he leaned
farther and farther toward him.

"_Now_ do you know why I hate you as no human thing can hate? _Your
wilful waste has made my hideous want!_ Now do you know why I said I'd
done a more terrific thing than had ever been done in the world's
history before? _I've gotten in!_ At last, at last, I've gotten in, in
spite of you, and after she was dead! I've done a greater and more
impossible thing than that great Mystery the world adores! I've gotten
in despite you, and without even a _woman's_ help! When we spoke of
_that_ life once before to-night, I shocked you! Do you believe _now_
that my history is more terrible, or not? He suffered, and suffered, and
He died. But He'd _lived_! His torture was a few hours--for mine
to-night, I've waited almost as many years as He did, and to what end?
_To nothing!_ God, God, do you see _that_?"

He twisted open his hands and held out his bruised wrists before the
trembling man's eyes. "For all those years--"

He suddenly drew himself to his full height and threw them passionately
above his head in the posture that had haunted Henry Montagu from the
first instant's glimpse of him.

"For all those endless years, ever since your marriage-night, I've stood
beating, beating, beating at the door of life until my wrists have bled!
And you didn't hear me! You couldn't and she wouldn't! You didn't want
to! You wouldn't listen! And you--you never have heard that desperate
pounding and calling, not even to-night, though even so, with that woman
out of the way, I made you _feel_ me! But _she'd_ heard me, the ghoul!
She heard me again and again! I made her! I told her what she was, and
that you knew it, and I meant it! Her mar