oached your
bone, you have no hesitation in stealing from another!" The
accumulated bitterness of years of repression spoke in the taunt.

Across the little man's face there fell an impenetrable mask, like the
armor which dropped about an ancient ship of war before the shock of
battle.

"I'm not on trial. I've not changed my name--" he nodded significantly
toward the view beyond the open door,--"and sought seclusion."

Again the bitterness of memory prompted Camilla to speak the harshest
words of her life.

"No, you hadn't the decency. It was more pleasure to thrust your shame
daily in my face."

Arnold's color paled above the dark beard line; but the woman took no
heed.

"Why did you wait a year," continued the bitter voice, "to end
in--this? If it must have been--why not before?"

"I repeat, I'm not on trial. If you've anything to say, I'll listen."

Something new in the man's face caught Camilla's attention, softened
the tone of her voice.

"I've only this to say. You've asked for an explanation and a promise;
but I can give you neither. If there ever comes a time when I feel
they're due you, and I'm able to comply, I'll give them both gladly."
The absent look of the past returned to her eyes. "Even if I wished, I
couldn't give you an explanation now. I can't make myself understand
the contradiction. Somehow, knowing you so long, your beliefs crept
insistently into my loneliness. It seems hideous now, but I was honest
then. I believed them, too. I don't blame you; I only pity you. You
were the embodiment of protest against the established, of the
non-responsibility of the individual, of skepticism in everything.
Your eternal 'why' covered my horizon. Every familiar thing came to
bear a question I couldn't answer. My whole life seemed one eternal
doubt. One thing I'd never known, and I questioned it most of all; the
one thing I know now to be the truth,--the greatest truth in the
world." For an instant the present crowded the past from Camilla's
mind, but only for an instant. "Whatever I was at the time, you'd made
me--with your deathless 'why.' When I signed the obligation of that
day, I believed it was of my own free will; but I know now it was you
who wrote it for both of us--you, with your perpetual interrogation. I
don't accuse you of doing this deliberately, maliciously. We were both
deceived; but none the less the fact remains." A shadow, almost of
horror, passed over her face.

"Time passed, and