He lifted up his one usable hand in agony.

“We wait until we die, before going there,” I said; “I am alive, don’t you see?”

“Alive, and not dead? you! whom I killed eighteen years ago, have you come to reproach me now?  Oh, I have suffered, even to atonement, for it!  You would pardon, if you only knew what I have suffered for you.”

Surely delirium had returned.  I urged the poor man to take the contents of the glass.

He promised, upon condition of my forgiveness,—­forgiveness for having killed me, who never had been killed, who was surely alive.  Jeffy had come in again, and had listened to the pleading.

“Why don’t you tell him yes, Miss Anna?  He doesn’t know a word he’s sayin’.  It’ll keep him quiet like; he’s like a baby,” he whispered, with a covert pull at my dress by way of impressment.

And so, guided by Chloe’s boy, I said, “I forgive.”

“Why don’t you go, if you forgive me?  I don’t like to keep you here, when you belong up there”; and he pointed his words by the aid of his available hand.

I knew then why Miss Axtell had loved this man:  it was simply one of those cruel, compulsory offerings up of self, that allure one, in open sight of torture, on to the altar.  Oh, poor woman! why hath thy Maker so forsaken thee?  And in mute wonder at this most wondrous wrong, that crept into mortal life when the serpent went out through Eden and left an opening in the Garden, I forgot for the while my present responsibility, in compassionate pity for the pale, beautiful lady in Redleaf, into whose heart this man had come,—­unwillingly, I knew, when I looked into his face, and yet, having come, must grow into its Eden, even unto the time that Eternity shadows; and I sent out the arms of my spirit, and twined them invisibly around her, who truly had spoken when she said, “I want you,” with such hungry tones.  God, the Infinite, has given me comprehension of such women, has given me His own loving pity,—­in little human grains, it is true, but they come from “the shining shore.”  “Miss Axtell does want me,” I thought; “she is right,—­I am gladness to her.”

“Will you go?” came from the invalid.

“A woman, loving thus, never comes alone into a friend’s heart,” something said; “you must receive her shadow”; and I looked at the person who had said, “Will you go?”

There are various words used in the dictionary of life, descriptive of men such as him now before me.  They mostly are formed in syllables numbering four and five, which all integrate in the one word irresistible:  how pitifully I abhor that word!—­every letter has a serpent-coil in it.  “Love thy neighbor even as thyself.”  It is good that these words came just here to wall themselves before the torrent that might not have been stayed until I had laid the mountain of my thought upon the sycophantic syllabication that the world loves to “lip” unto the world,—­the false world, that, blinded, blinds to blinder blindness those that fain would behold.  There is a crying out in the earth for a place of torment; there are sins for which we want what God hath prepared for the wicked.