memory to the
hour when the guests were all gone, the house all silent, and we stood
together in a little room, where I had at last discovered him, withdrawn
by himself, writing. There was a loaded pistol on the table. The paper
he had been writing was his will.

"Humphrey," said I, placing a finger on the pistol, "why is this?"

He gave me a look, a hungry, passionate look, then he grew as white as
the paper he had just subscribed with his name.

"I am ruined," he murmured. "I have made unwarrantable use of Mrs.
Ransome's money; her return has undone me. Delight, I love you, but I
cannot face the future. You will be provided for----"

"Will I?" I put in softly, very softly, for my way was strewn with
pitfalls and precipices. "I do not think so, Humphrey. If the money you
have put away is not yours, my first care would be to restore it. Then
what would I have left? A dowry of odium and despair, and I am scarcely
eighteen."

"But--but--you do not understand, Delight. I have been a villain, a
worse villain than you think. The only thing in my life I have not to
blush for is my love for you. This is pure, even if it has been selfish.
I know it is pure, because I have begun to suffer. If I could tell
you----

"Mrs. Ransome has already told me," said I. "Who do you think unlocked
the door of her retreat? I, Humphrey. I wanted to save you from
yourself, and _she_ understands me. She will never reveal the secret of
the years she has passed overhead."

Would he hate me? Would he love me? Would he turn that fatal weapon on
me, or level it again towards his own breast? For a moment I could not
tell; then the white horror in his face broke up, and, giving me a look
I shall never forget till I die, he fell prostrate on his knees and
lowered his proud head before me.

I did not touch it, but from that moment the schooling of our two hearts
began, and, though I can never look upon my husband with the frank joy
I see in other women's faces, I have learned not to look upon him with
distrust, and to thank God I did not forsake him when desertion might
have meant the destruction of the one small seed of goodness which had
developed in his heart with the advent of a love for which nothing in
his whole previous life had prepared him.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hermit Of ------ Street, by
Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HERMIT OF ------ STREET ***