to me!" he flung out, beside himself with
passionate jealousy and love. And then their eyes met, the one lurid
with an emotion well-nigh beyond control, the other wondering, pitiful,
amazed.

"Yes, let me go my way. I had not meant you to know it; but once--yes, I
will confess it to you--I scorned you to her. God knows how I have
repented; for I was beside myself then, blinded with my own folly and
arrogance. And now you have won the woman I love, whom I shall always
love, and it will be at once my bliss and my punishment. Take your
triumph--tell her that her erring knight came back, and paid her the
highest homage of his soul." Then, in a sudden, changed tone, freighted
with a pain that pierced the other's heart, he cried, "Jack Darcy, I
have made amends for that selfish blunder of my young manhood. For weeks
I have endured such pangs, that Heaven grant you may never know! I have
walked by her side with polar wastes between us; I have touched her hand
with fingers that have had no more passion in them than the dead; I have
watched her dewy lips ripe with kisses, and remembered they were for
you; I have been true, _true_ in word and deed and desire, but in
thought I must love her to her life's end. I will go quite away"--

Up to this point his words had come with the heat and flow of a
lava-torrent. Now his impassioned voice faltered, trembled, and seemed
to lose itself.

Jack Darcy stood transfixed. Was it a dream? Had Fred been so blind all
this while? He essayed speech; but the lines about his mouth were
constricted, and his breath came in quivering gasps, as the vision of
torture, suffered for honor's sake, rose up before him. Ah! if ever he
_had_ sinned,--and the temporary forgetfulness appeared such a little
thing to Jack's generous soul,--he had redeemed himself nobly.

"Oh! you thought--she doesn't love me, Fred,--not in that way," and his
voice had the full, throbbing inflection of a great joy. "We are
friends, such as a man and a woman can truly be. Do you not understand
that some people are so alike they run in parallels? there are no angles
to create the intense friction of love, they are so evenly balanced that
there is no desire for possessorship, they have just as wholesome an
influence over each other remaining apart. There is hardly Sylvie's
equal in the world. Half that I am, I owe her."

Had the night changed? Was the world flooded with a serene and tender
light? Was the moaning ocean filled wit