ves hope.

"A just man need fear no woman!" she exclaimed. "It is because you are
unjust and a coward that you fear--that you suspect--that you find it
necessary to hide and spy."

The color surged over his face.

"I have been outraged!" he cried--"I have been outraged!"

"And, like an unreasoning animal, you turn to devour the thing that has
hurt you?"

"I demand justice."

She threw out her hands and laughed suddenly and hysterically.

"And you call this justice? You call it justice to trap one man and set
a hundred others loose upon him?"

But Bale-Corphew turned upon her.

"And what is this man to you?" he cried. "What spell has he cast upon
you that you can forget his outrage and his blasphemy?"

Enid met the question with her new fortitude; searching Bale-Corphew's
turbulent face, she answered with a certain high simplicity.

"I do not know," she said. "Once I believed that I admired him--that I
looked up to him--because he was a Prophet; something higher and better
than myself. Now I know that my belief was wrong and false; that it was
because he is a man--because, before everything else in the world, he is
a man--that I turned to him, that I relied upon him."

Bale-Corphew gave a short, cruel laugh.

"So that is it? That is the secret? He is a man? Well, I will strip him
of his manhood! We have had our disillusioning; yours is to come. Here,
on this sacred spot where he has been so exalted, he will bite the
dust."

He paused triumphantly; and in the pause there rose again to Enid's mind
the picture of one tall, white-robed figure confronting a sea of
faces--all incensed--all passionately, vindictively unanimous in
desire.

"Oh no!" she said, suddenly, faltering before the picture. "No! No! You
cannot. You must not. Be merciful! Let him go. And if there is
anything--any recompense--" But even as it was spoken, the appeal died.
Somewhere in the heart of the House a solemn clock chimed the hour of
eight; and as though the sound were a signal, the curtain of the chapel
door was drawn softly back, and a stream of dark-robed figures poured
over the empty floor.

For a moment she stood immovable before the imminence of the crucial
scene; then, with a sensation of physical weakness and helplessness, she
turned, moved blindly forward, and sank into a vacant seat.

At the same moment Bale-Corphew left her without a word, and passed
rapidly down the aisle.

Great fear frequently exercises a paralyzi