nfronted me, in the midst
of the impenetrable darkness which enveloped all besides! Not a glimpse
of light to guide me, when I had possessed myself of Rosanna Spearman's
secret at the Shivering Sand. And not a glimpse of light now, when I had
appealed to Rachel herself, and had heard the hateful story of the night
from her own lips.

She was the first, this time, to break the silence.

"Well?" she said, "you have asked, and I have answered. You have made me
hope something from all this, because you hoped something from it. What
have you to say now?"

The tone in which she spoke warned me that my influence over her was a
lost influence once more.

"We were to look at what happened on my birthday night, together," she
went on; "and we were then to understand each other. Have we done that?"

She waited pitilessly for my reply. In answering her I committed a
fatal error--I let the exasperating helplessness of my situation get the
better of my self-control. Rashly and uselessly, I reproached her for
the silence which had kept me until that moment in ignorance of the
truth.

"If you had spoken when you ought to have spoken," I began; "if you had
done me the common justice to explain yourself----"

She broke in on me with a cry of fury. The few words I had said seemed
to have lashed her on the instant into a frenzy of rage.

"Explain myself!" she repeated. "Oh! is there another man like this in
the world? I spare him, when my heart is breaking; I screen him when my
own character is at stake; and HE--of all human beings, HE--turns on me
now, and tells me that I ought to have explained myself! After believing
in him as I did, after loving him as I did, after thinking of him by
day, and dreaming of him by night--he wonders I didn't charge him with
his disgrace the first time we met: 'My heart's darling, you are a
Thief! My hero whom I love and honour, you have crept into my room under
cover of the night, and stolen my Diamond!' That is what I ought to have
said. You villain, you mean, mean, mean villain, I would have lost fifty
diamonds, rather than see your face lying to me, as I see it lying now!"

I took up my hat. In mercy to HER--yes! I can honestly say it--in mercy
to HER, I turned away without a word, and opened the door by which I had
entered the room.

She followed, and snatched the door out of my hand; she closed it, and
pointed back to the place that I had left.

"No!" she said. "Not yet! It seems that I o