moment for the full stroke had not come; that the ground
required preparation.

"I think," she interrupted, smiling gravely, "that you want me to be
your friend. More than that, we have long been friends. And deep down in
your heart I believe you want my regard; you want me to think well of
you. And I must tell you that there's a kind of happiness--for it must
be happiness--that comes to me at the thought of it. Something there is
between you and me that is different; somehow we understand each other."

His response was beyond anything she had hoped for; a light shone
suddenly in his face. There was no doubt of the sincerity of the feeling
with which he replied:--

"Yes; I have felt it; I felt it the first day we met!"

"And because there is this understanding, this tie, I dare to be frank
with you: I mean to make your reparation difficult. But you will not
refuse it; you will not disappoint me. I mean, that you must throw away
the victory you are prepared to win."

He shook his head slowly, but he could not evade the pleading of her
eyes.

"I can't do it; it's too much," he muttered. "It's the goal I have
sought for ten years. It would be like throwing away life itself."

"Yes; it would be bitter; but it would be the first sacrifice you ever
made in your life. You have built your life on lies. You have lurked in
shadows, hating the light. You have done your work in the dark,
creeping, hiding, mocking, vanishing. What you propose doing to-night in
anticipating the blow of your enemy is only an act of bravado. There is
no real courage in that. When you thrust Dan Harwood into the convention
to utter your sneer for you, it was the act of a coward. And that was
contemptible cowardice. You picked him up, a clean young man of ideals,
and tried to train him in your cowardly shadow ways. When the pricking
of your conscience made you feel some responsibility for me, you
manifested it like a coward. You sent a cowardly message to the best man
that ever lived, not knowing, not caring how it would wound him. And you
have been a great thief, stealing away from men the thing they should
prize most, but you have taught them to distrust it--their faith in
their country--even more, their faith in each other! The shadows have
followed you to your own home. You have hidden yourself behind a veil of
mystery, so that your own wife and children don't know the man you are.
You have never been true to anything--not to yourself, not to