because you, who have no claim to the child
but that of self-indulgence--because you believe her yours, I who have
for years carried her in my bosom, am going to give her up to a man,
who, all these years, has made not one effort to discover his missing
child? In the sight of God, which of us is her father? But I forget;
that is a question you can not understand. Whether or not you are her
father, I do not care a straw. You have not _proved_ it; and I tell you
that, until the court of chancery orders me to deliver up my darling to
you, to be taught there is no living Father of men--and that by the
fittest of all men to enforce the lie--not until then will I yield a
hair of her head to you. God grant, if you were her father, her mother
had more part in her than you!--A thousand times rather I would we had
both perished in the roaring mud, than that I should have to give her up
to you."

He struck his fist on the table, rose, and turned from him. Faber also
rose, quietly, silent and pale. He stood a moment, waiting. Mr. Drake
turned. Faber made him an obeisance, and left the room.

The minister was too hard upon him. He would not have been so hard but
for his atheism; he would not have been so hard if he could have seen
into his soul. But Faber felt he deserved it. Ere he reached home,
however, he had begun to think it rather hard that, when a man confessed
a wrong, and desired to make what reparation he could, he should have
the very candor of his confession thus thrown in his teeth. Verily, even
toward the righteous among men, candor is a perilous duty.

He entered the surgery. There he had been making some experiments with
peroxide of manganese, a solution of which stood in a bottle on the
table. A ray of brilliant sunlight was upon it, casting its shadow on a
piece of white paper, a glorious red. It caught his eyes. He could never
tell what it had to do with the current of his thoughts, but neither
could he afterward get rid of the feeling that it had had some influence
upon it. For as he looked at it, scarcely knowing he did, and thinking
still how hard the minister had been upon him, suddenly he found himself
in the minister's place, and before him Juliet making her sad
confession: how had he met that confession? The whole scene returned,
and for the first time struck him right on the heart, and then first he
began to be in reality humbled in his own eyes. What if, after all, he
was but a poor creature? What if,