me. Men of my stamp don't make
theatrical exits; we're too confoundedly sane. Whether we do well or
whether we do ill, we plod along on our treadmill round, from the house
to the office, and from the office to the grave, as if we never had
anything on the conscience. But if I had the spirit of Bienville, do you
know what I should do?"

"No, no, no!" she burst out. "Don't say it! Don't say it!"

"Then I won't. But if Bienville thought of it, why shouldn't I? What has
he done that is worse than what I've done? What has he done that's as
bad? For, after all, you were little or nothing to him, when you were
everything to me. I knew you as he didn't know you. I had lived in one
house with you, watched you, studied you, tried you, put you to tests
that you never knew anything about, and had seen you come through them
successfully. I had seen how you bore misfortune; I had seen how you
carried yourself in difficult situations; I had seen the skill with
which you ruled my house, and the wisdom with which you were more than a
mother to my child; I had seen you combine with all that is most womanly
the patience and fortitude of a man; and it wasn't enough for me--it
wasn't enough for me!"

He threw himself back into his seat, with a desperate flinging out of
the hands, letting his arms drop heavily over the sides of his chair
till his fingers touched the floor.

"My God! My God!" he groaned, ironically. "It wasn't enough for me! I
doubted her. I doubted her on the first idle word that came my way. I
did more than doubt her. I haled her into my court, and tried her, and
condemned her, and, as nearly as might be, put her to death. I, with my
ten hundred thousand sins--all of them as black as Erebus--found her not
pure enough for me! It ought to make one die of laughter. Diane," he
went on, in another tone--a tone of ghastly jocularity--"didn't it amuse
you, knowing yourself to be what you are--knowing what you had done for
Mrs. Eveleth--knowing the things Bienville has just said of you--didn't
it amuse you to see me sitting in judgment on you?"

"It doesn't amuse me to see you sitting in judgment on yourself."

"Doesn't it? I should think it would. It seems to me that if I saw a man
who had done me so much harm visited with such awful justice as I'm
getting now, it would make up to me for nearly everything I ever had to
suffer."

"In my case it only adds to it. I wish you wouldn't say these things. If
you ever did me wrong