he kisses that I put in my letter to him. It was
brutal, yes, and cowardly, to make Mrs. Dale write instead. If Mrs.
Dale hadn't written telling me he'd received my letter, I couldn't
have found it in my heart to believe that he'd treat me so abominably
cruel."

And, groaning, he spoke to this mental picture that he had evoked for
his renewed torment. "Norah, my sweet one, I can't help myself.
Commands have been laid upon me. I'm no longer free to do what I
please. Norah, don't look away from me. Turn to your boy--let him see
your dear eyes, though the sight of them makes him bleed." And the
thought-picture obeyed him. He saw the entrancing oval of the face
instead of its delicate profile, looked into the profound beauty of
her eyes, felt that her warm red lips were close in front of him, and
that he would go raving mad if they did not come closer still and let
him kiss them.

After such spasms of burning pain he was temporarily exhausted; he
felt completely emptied of emotional power, as if his nerves had
delivered so fierce a discharge that they must cease from working
until time and repose had allowed them to replenish themselves. Then,
so long as this state lasted, his love for the girl was deprived of
all material for passion; it was as though the highest thinking part
of him had been cut off from the sensational mass, and only the top of
his head served to keep alive his memory of the girl.

Then he thought of her with a fantastic longing that seemed to him
beautiful, immaterial, and innocent. He said to himself, "I don't
shirk my punishment. I'm going to take it. But fair's fair--There's no
occasion to make myself out worse than I really am. Norah has taken
hold of me a great deal more by my int'lect than by the low animal
kind of feelings that are the mark of the abject sinner. I can't live
without her; but if I might live with her, I feel I could be content
to let it all remain quite innocent between us. Yes, I feel I could be
happy with her just as a companion, provided she and I were alone
together, far away from everybody else--yes, I'd take my happiness on
those terms, that she was never to be anything else to me but just
that."

But soon those treacherous nerves restored themselves, the upper and
lower parts of him were all one again, and the diffuse yet darting
pain returned. Anger came too. It seemed that the dead man mocked him,
went on softly laughing at him.

"What a humbug you are"--he gave th