ons for
condemnation multiplied, he did but push on the harder, striking at
each tender spot in his own armor. And as the day turned fatally
against him, his face looked great and heroic, and his voice sounded
almost triumphant.

Thus far, he had only generalized; now, he was come to his own plight.
On several points he had been painfully in doubt: whether he had done
the deed in self-defence; whether he had meant to do it; whether it
had not been a blind, mad accident, since swollen by fevered
imagination into the likeness of wilful crime. But against such doubts
arrayed itself the ineffaceable memory of that wild joy which had
filled his soul, when he had felt his enemy in his power! Had the man
survived, Balder might still have doubted; being dead, doubts were but
cowardly sophistry.

But during the brief pause he made, came a backward recoil of that
impulse which had swept him on. All at once he was cold, and wavered.
Gnulemah was sitting with her elbow on her knee, her strange eyes
fixed upon him. Had he duly considered what effect all this might have
on her? In aiming at his own life, might not the sword pass also
through hers? Abruptly to behold sin,--to find in the first man she
had learnt to know, the sinner,--to be left this burden on her untried
soul,--might this not ruin more than her earthly happiness? Did she
still love him, such love could end only in misery; should she hate
him who of all men was bound to protect her defencelessness,--that
were misery indeed!

This misgiving, arresting his hand at the instant of delivering the
final blow, almost discouraged the much-tried man. He glanced sullenly
toward the edge of the cliff, only a few yards off. A new thought
jarred through his nerves! He got up and walked to the brink. Full
sixty feet to the bottom.

Gnulemah also rose slowly, and stretched herself like a tired child,
sending a lazy tension through every noble limb and polished muscle.
She sighed with a deep breathing in and out, and pressed her hands
against her temples.

"I was not made to understand such things. Tell me of what you have
done or seen--I shall understand that. The things my love does not
enter only trouble me and make me sad."

As she spoke, she turned away towards the house. She saw, or thought
she saw, a man's figure stealing cautiously behind a clump of bushes
near the north-eastern corner. Her listlessness fell from, her like a
mantle, and she watched, motionless!

Her