e followed him.

As irresistibly as ever he drew her.

"Jerome! Jerome! Where are you going?"

"To ruin!" exclaimed he, turning upon her with that barbaric
fierceness which seems to underlie everything strong in nature--"to
ruin, where you women without principle, have sent many a better man!
To ruin, and to hell, if I choose," he added, with fearful emphasis.
"My going and my coming are no longer any concern of yours!"

"Yes, they are, Jerome," she assured him, deprecatingly. "Don't leave
me in anger, Jerome!"

"Not in anger? Then, how--in delight?" There was now a menacing gleam
in his eye which more than ever alarmed her. "My cause is lost. You
have done me all the wrong you could, and now that I am dismissed, set
aside, told to begone, debased, and dethroned, you expect me to be
delighted over it, do you?"

"No, Jerome; but do not leave me feeling so. Promise me to do nothing
rash."

"I will not promise you anything! You have not spared my feelings, why
should _I_ spare yours? Since your affection for me has moderated into
that platonic kind, which admits of your happiness in union with
another, I will do whatever I please to do, knowing no act of mine,
however dreadful, will affect you."

"Oh, Jerome, do not say that! You must see, you must know in your
heart, that I do still care for you--Oh, God! more than I ought."

"And yet not enough to make you do what is right!"

"But to right you, will wrong Rube," she answered in confusion.

"Enough, then; you know your own feelings, or ought to. Since Rube is
the one dearest to you, marry him!"

He turned again upon his heel. Obeying an impulse she could not
resist, Mell once more detained him. It is hard to die, everybody
says; but to die yourself must be easier than to give up the one you
love.

"Jerome, wait a moment! Come back! Jerome, you do not realize what a
dishonorable thing this is you are persuading me to do?"

"Don't I?" he laughed wildly. "God Almighty! Mellville, what do you
take me for? Wouldn't I have been here a week ago, two weeks ago, but
for the battle I have had to fight with my own scruples--but for the
war I have had to wage with my own soul? I have said to myself, again
and again, 'I will not do this thing though I die!' But when I started
out upon this journey, it had come to this: 'I must do this thing or
else--die!'"

Shaken as a storm-rifted tree bending in the blast, she was not yet
uprooted.

"It is hard, hard," she murm