“It doesn’t amuse me to see you sitting in judgment on yourself.”

“Doesn’t it?  I should think it would.  It seems to me that if I saw a man who had done me so much harm visited with such awful justice as I’m getting now, it would make up to me for nearly everything I ever had to suffer.”

“In my case it only adds to it.  I wish you wouldn’t say these things.  If you ever did me wrong, I always knew it was—­by mistake.”

“Oh, Lord!  Oh, Lord!” He laughed outright, getting up from his chair and dragging himself heavily across the room, where, with his hands in his pockets and his back against the bookshelves, he stood facing her.  “What do you think of Bienville’s attitude toward Marion Grimston?” he asked, with an inflection that would have sounded casual if it had not been for all that lay behind.

“I can understand it; but I think he was wrong.”

“You think he ought to allow her to marry him?”

“Weighing one thing with another—­yes.”

“Would you marry a man who had shown himself such a hound?”

“It would depend.”

“On what?”

“Oh, on a good many things.”

“Such as—?”

She hesitated a minute before deciding whether or not to walk into his trap, but, as his eyes were on the ground and she felt stronger than a minute or two ago, she decided to do it.

“It would depend, for one thing, on whether or not I loved him.”

“And if you did love him?”

Again she hesitated, before making up her mind to speak.

“Then it would depend on whether or not he loved me.”

She had given him his chance.  The word he had never uttered must come now or never.  For an instant he seemed about to seize his opportunity; but when he actually spoke it was only to say: 

“Would you marry me?”

“No.”  She gave her answer firmly.

“No?”

“No.”

“Why?”

She shrugged her shoulders and threw out her hands, but said nothing in words.

“Is it because I haven’t expressed regret for all the things I have—­to regret?”

She shook her head.

“Because if it is,” he went on, “I haven’t done it only for the reason that the utmost expression would be so inadequate as to become a mockery.  When a man has sinned against light, as I’ve done, no mere cries of contrition are going to win him pardon.  That must come as a spontaneous act of grace, as it wells out of the heart of the Most High—­or it can’t come at all.”

“That isn’t the reason.”

“Then there’s another one?”

“Yes; another one.”

“One that’s insurmountable?”

“Yes, as things are—­that’s insurmountable.”

With a look of dumb, unresenting sadness, he turned away, and, leaning on the mantelpiece, stood with his back toward her, and his face buried in his hands.

[Illustration:  DRAWN BY FRANK CRAIG “SINCE THE INNER SHRINE IS UNLOCKED—­AT LAST—­I’LL GO IN”]