d me,
I could not deny myself, I could not lie to you; but, for God's sake,
tell none of what has passed between us!"

"But why?" she pursued--"why? You lie under this charge still--you
cannot disprove it, you say; but why not come out before the world, and
state to all what you swear now to me, and claim your right to bear your
father's honors? If you were falsely accused, there must have been some
guilty in your stead; and if--"

"Cease, for pity's sake! Forget I ever told you I was guiltless! Blot my
memory out; think of me as dead, as I have been, till your eyes
called me back to life. Think that I am branded with the theft of your
brother's name; think that I am vile, and shameless and fallen as the
lowest wretch that pollutes this army; think of me as what you will, but
not as innocent!"

The words broke out in a torrent from him, bearing down with them all
his self-control, as the rush of waters bears away all barriers that
have long dammed their course. They were wild, passionate, incoherent;
unlike any that had ever passed his lips, or been poured out in her
presence. He felt mad with the struggle that tore him asunder, the
longing to tell the truth to her, though he should never after look upon
her face again, and the honor which bound silence on him for sake of the
man whom he had sworn under no temptation to dispossess and to betray.

She heard him silently, with her grand, meditative eyes, in which the
slow tears still floated, fixed upon him. Most women would have thought
that conscious guilt spoke in the violence of his self-accusation; she
did not. Her intuition was too fine, her sympathies too true. She felt
that he feared, not that she should unjustly think him guilty, but that
she should justly think him guiltless. She knew that this, whatever its
root might be, was the fear of the stainless, not of the criminal life.

"I hear you," she answered him gently; "but I do not believe you, even
against yourself. The man whom Philip loved and honored never sank to
the base fraud of a thief."

Her glorious eyes were still on him as she spoke, seeming to read his
very soul. Under that glance all the manhood, all the race, all the
pride, and the love, and the courage within him refused to bear in her
sight the shame of an alien crime, and rose in revolt to fling off the
bondage that forced him to stand as a criminal before the noble gaze of
this woman. His eyes met hers full, and rested on them without wa