thinking of? Why have
you come here to-night?"

"To save your soul, my child. It is in great, great peril."

At first she took this for the common, everyday language of the devotee,
but another look into his face banished that interpretation, and her fear
rose to terror. Nevertheless she talked lightly, hardly knowing what she
said. "Am I, then, so very wicked? Surely Heaven doesn't want me yet,
John. Some day I trust--I hope----"

"To-night, to-night--_now!_"

Then her cheeks turned pale and her lips became white and bloodless. She
had returned to the sofa, and half rose from it, then sat back,
stretching out one hand as if to ward off a blow, but still keeping her
eyes riveted on his face. Once she looked round to the door and tried to
cry out, but her voice would not answer her.

This speechless fright lasted only a moment. Then she was herself again,
and looked fearlessly up at him. She had the full use of her intellect,
and her quick instinct went to the root of things. "This is the madness
of jealousy," she thought. "There is only one way to deal with it. If I
cry out--if I show that I am afraid--if I irritate him, it will soon, be
over." She told herself in a moment that she must try gentleness,
tenderness, reason, affection, love.

Trembling from head to foot, she stepped up to him again, and began
softly and sweetly trying to explain herself. "John, dear John, if you
see me with certain people and in certain places you must not think from
that----"

But he broke in upon her with a torrent of words. "I can't think of it at
all, Glory. When I look ahead I see nothing but shame and misery and
degradation for you in the future. That man is destroying you body and
soul. He is leading you on to the devil and hell and damnation, and I can
not stand by and see it done!"

"Believe me, John, you are mistaken, quite mistaken." But, with a look of
sombre fury, he cried, "Can you deny it?"

"I can protect and care for myself, John."

"With that man's words in your ears, still can you deny it?"

Suddenly she remembered Drake's last whisper as she got into the hansom,
and she covered her face with her hands.

"You can't! It is the truth! The man is following you to ruin you, and
you know it. You've known it from the first, therefore you deserve all
that can ever come to you. Do you know what you are guilty of? You are
guilty of soul-suicide. What is the suicide of the body to the suicide of
the soul? What is t