e, he felt it at last. The true thing started
within him. God, the avenger, the revealer and the healer, had held up
this woman as a glass to him that he might see himself.

He saw her as she had been, a docile, soft-eyed girl, untouched by
anything that defames or shames, and all in a moment the man that had
never been in him until now, from the time he laughed first into his
mother's eyes as a babe, spoke out as simply as a child would have
spoken, and told the truth. There were no ameliorating phrases to soften
it to her ears; there was no tact, there was no blarney, there was
no suave suggestion now, no cheap gaiety, no cynicism of the social
vampire--only the direct statement of a self-reproachful, dying man.

"I didn't fully know what I was doing," he said to her. "If I had
understood then as I do now, I would never have come near you. It was
the worst wickedness I ever did."

The new note in his voice, the new fashion of his words, the new look of
his eyes, startled her, confused her. She could scarcely believe he was
the same man. The dumb desolation lifted a little, and a look of under
standing seemed to pierce her tragic apathy. As if a current of thought
had been suddenly sent through her, she drew herself up with a little
shiver, and looked at him as if she were about to speak; but instead of
doing so, a strange, unhappy smile passed across her lips.

He saw that all the goodness of her nature was trying to arouse itself
and assure him of forgiveness. It did not deceive him in the least.

"I won't be so mean now as to say I was weak," he added. "I was not
weak; I was bad. I always felt I was born a liar and a thief. I've lied
to myself all my life; and I've lied to other people because I never was
a true man."

"A thief!" she said at last, scarcely above a whisper, and looking at
him with a flash of horror in her eyes. "A thief!"

It was no use; he could not allow her to think he meant a thief in
the vulgar, common sense, though that was what he was: just a common
criminal.

"I have stolen the kind thoughts and love of people to whom I gave
nothing in return," he said steadily. "There is nothing good in me.
I used to think I was good-natured; but I was not, or I wouldn't have
brought misery to a girl like you."

His truth broke down the barriers of her anger and despair. Something
welled up in her heart: it may have been love, it may have been inherent
womanliness.

"Why did you marry Christine?"