from her dignity. "It is too much or it is
not enough."

His head drooped and he fell back, throwing a glance to right and left
at the two officials who had drawn up on either side of him. It was an
expressive glance; it was as if he said, "You see! she knows as well as
you for whom the arrow was intended--yet she is kind."

But in an instant later he was before her again, with an aspect so
changed that they all marveled.

"I had hoped," he began, then stopped. Passion had supplanted duty in his
disturbed mind; a passion so great it swept everything before it and he
stood bare to the soul before the woman he had wronged and under the eyes
of these men who knew it. "Life is over for us two," said he, "whether
your presence here is a trap in which I have been caught and from which
it is hopeless for me to extricate myself; or whether it is by chance or
an act of Providence that we should meet again with eager ears listening
and eager eyes watching for such tokens of guilt as will make their own
course clear, true it is that they have got what they sought; and
whatever the result, nothing of real comfort or honor is left for either
you or me. Our lives have gone down in shipwreck; but before we yield
utterly to our fate, will you not grant me my prayer if I precede it by
an appeal for forgiveness not only for old wrongs but for my latest and
gravest one? Ermentrude, I entreat."

Ah, then, they were witness to the fascination of the man, hidden
heretofore, but now visible even to the schooled spectators of this
tragedy of human souls. The tone permeated with pathos and charm, the
look, the attitude from which all formality had fled and only the natural
grace remained, all were of the sort which sways without virtue and
rouses in both weak and strong an answering chord of sympathy.

The woman in whom it probably awakened a thousand memories trembled under
it. She drew back, but her whole countenance had softened, revealing
whatever of native charm she also possessed. Would she heed his prayer?
If she did not, they could well be silent. If she did----

But the woman gave no sign of yielding.

"Cease, Carleton," came in stern reply--stern for all the approach to
concession in her manner. "If your life and my life are both over, let us
talk of other things than marriage. When one faces death, whether of body
or spirit, one clings to higher hopes than those of earth or its
remaining interests. If my forgiveness will help