A sudden impulse of escape, desperate in its strength, possessed Violet; perhaps to name that Thing that clung so closely to Roger might shake its power,—­and with a trembling, vibrating voice she spoke:—­

“Roger,—­you are thinking of the Shadow?”

He did not move, nor at once speak; no new expression stirred his dark face; at length he answered, in a voice that seemed to come from some lips far away, in an unechoing distance:—­

“The Shadow?—­Yes.  I see it in all faces.  It lies on the valley yonder; in the air; on every mortal brow and lip it gathers deeper yet.  Violet, you, too, share the Shadow!”

Slowly, as if his words froze her, Violet rose and turned toward him; a light shone from her eyes that melted their dark depths into the radiance of high noon; and she spoke with a thrilled, yet unfaltering tone:—­

“Yes, I share it, it is true.  I feel and see the gloom; but if the Shadow haunts me, Roger Pierce, ask your own heart who cast it there!  When we were first friends, I knew nothing of that darkness.  I tried with all purity and compassion to draw you upward into light; and for reward, you have wrapped your own blackness round me, and hate your own doing.  My work is over,—­is in vain!  It remains only that I free myself from this Shadow, and leave you to the mercy of a Power with whom no such Presence can cope,—­in whom no darkness nor shadow may abide.”

She turned to leave him with these words, but cast back a look of such love and tender pity, that she seemed to Roger the very Spirit that had borne Sunny away.

Bewildered and pained to the heart, he groped his way homeward, and night lapsed into morning, and returned and went again more than once, ere sleep returned to his eyes.

Violet kept no vigils; she wept herself asleep as a child against its mother’s bosom, and loving eyes guarded that childlike rest.  But Roger’s waking was haunted with remorse and fearful expectation; and as days crept by, and Memory, like one who fastens the galley-slave to his oar, still pressed on his thoughts the constant patience, toil, and affection of Violet Channing, he felt how truly she had spoken of him, and from his soul abhorred the Shadow of his life.

Here he vanishes.  Whether with successful conflict he fought with the evil and prevailed, and showed himself a man,—­or whether the Thing renewed its dominion, and he drew to himself another nature, not for the good power of its pure contact, but for the further increase of that darkness, and the blinding of another soul, is never yet to be known.

Of Violet Channing he saw no more; with her his sole earthly redemption had fled; she went her way, free henceforward from the Shadow, and guarded in the arms of the shining Spirit.

The wind yet howls and dashes without; the rain, rushing in gusts on roof and casement, keeps no time nor tune; the fire is dead in the ashes; the red rose, in the lessening light, turns gray;—­but far away to the south the cloud begins to scatter; faint amber steals along the crest of the distant hills; after all evils, hope remains,—­even for a Man with two Shadows.  Let us, perhaps his kindred after the spirit, not despair.