pers that Lord Newhaven
had been accidently killed on the line. The revulsion of feeling was too
sudden, too overwhelming. He could not bear it. He could not live
through it. He flung himself on his face upon the floor, and sobbed as
if his heart would break.

* * * * *

The cyclone of passion which had swept Hugh into its vortex spent itself
and him, and flung him down at last. How long a time elapsed he never
knew between the moment when he, read the news of the accident and the
moment when shattered, exhausted, disfigured by emotion, he raised
himself to his feet. He opened the window, and the night air laid its
cool mother-touch upon his face and hands. The streets were silent. The
house was silent. He leaned with closed eyes against the window-post.
Time passed by on the other side.

And after a while angels came and ministered to him. Thankfulness came
softly, gently, to take his shaking hand in hers. The awful past was
over. A false step, a momentary giddiness on the part of his enemy, and
the hideous strangling meshes of the past had fallen from him at a
touch, as if they had never wrapped him round. Lord Newhaven was gone
to return no more. The past went with him. Dead men tell no tales. No
one knew of the godless compact between them, and of how he, Hugh, had
failed to keep to it, save they two alone. He and one other. And that
other was dead--was dead.

Hope came next, shyly, silently, still pale from the embrace of her
sister Despair, trimming anew her little lamp, which the laboring breath
of Despair had wellnigh blown out. She held the light before Hugh,
shading it with her veil, for his eyes were dazed with long gazing into
darkness. She turned it faintly upon the future, and he looked where the
light fell. And the light grew.

He had a future once more. He had been given that second chance for
which he had so yearned. His life was his own once more: not the shamed
life in death--worse than death of the last two days--but his own to
take up again, to keep, to enjoy, best of all, to use worthily. No
horrible constraint was upon him to lay it down, or to live in torment
because he still held it. He was free, free to marry Rachel whom he
loved, and who loved him. He saw his life with her. Hope smiled, and
turned up her light. It was too bright. Hugh hid his face in his hands.

And, last of all, dwarfing Hope, came a divine constraining presence who
ever stretches out str