killed her... We have to start again....
I know all."

"You know that in my wretched anger and madness I--"

"Oh, please do not speak of it," she said; "it is so bad even in
thought."

"But will you never forgive me, and care for me? We have to live our
lives together."

"Pray let us not speak of it now," she said, in a weary voice; then,
breathlessly: "It is of much more consequence that you should love
me--and the child."

He drew himself up with a choking sigh, and spread out his arms to her.
"Oh, my wife!" he exclaimed.

"No, no," she cried, "this is unreasonable; we know so little of each
other.... Good-night, again."

He turned at the door, came back, and, stooping, kissed the child on the
lips. Then he said: "You are right. I deserve to suffer.... Good-night."

But when he was gone she dropped on her knees, and kissed the child many
times on the lips also.

CHAPTER IX. THE FAITH OF COMRADES

When Francis Armour left his wife's room he did not go to his own, but
quietly descended the stairs, went to the library, and sat down. The
loneliest thing in the world is to be tete-a-tete with one's conscience.
A man may have a bad hour with an enemy, a sad hour with a friend,
a peaceful hour with himself, but when the little dwarf, conscience,
perches upon every hillock of remembrance and makes slow signs--those
strange symbols of the language of the soul--to him, no slave upon the
tread-mill suffers more.

The butler came in to see if anything was required, but Armour only
greeted him silently and waved him away. His brain was painfully alert,
his memory singularly awake. It seemed that the incident of this hour
had so opened up every channel of his intelligence that all his life ran
past him in fantastic panorama, as by that illumination which comes to
the drowning man. He seemed under some strange spell. Once or twice he
rose, rubbed his eyes, and looked round the room--the room where as a
boy he had spent idle hours, where as a student he had been in the hands
of his tutor, and as a young man had found recreations such as belong
to ambitious and ardent youth. Every corner was familiar. Nothing was
changed. The books upon the shelves were as they were placed twenty
years ago. And yet he did not seem a part of it. It did not seem natural
to him. He was in an atmosphere of strangeness--that atmosphere which
surrounds a man, as by a cloud, when some crisis comes upon him and
his life seems to stand st