“But I do!” he exclaimed bitterly.  “I hate you.  You have ruined me, and now you confess it.  From the time that I first saw you I have never had a moment’s peace.  Why did you ever cross my path?  Could you not have left me alone in my happiness and innocence?  Look at me now.  See what you have brought me to.  I am ruined!  But I am not alone.  You have pulled yourself down with me.  What will you say when I tell you that you are involved in a crime that must drag us both to hell?”

“A crime?” she cried, clasping her hands in terror.

“Yes, a crime.  You need not look so innocent.  You are as guilty as I, or at least you are as deeply involved.  We are bound together in misery.  We are doomed.”

“Doomed!  Doomed!  What do you mean?  Tell me, I implore you—–­ do not speak in riddles!”

“Tell you?  Do you wish to know?  Are you in earnest?  Then I will!  You are not my wife!  There!  It is out at last!”

Pepeeta sprang to her feet and stood staring at him in horror.

“Not your wife?” she gasped.

“No, not my wife,” he said, repeating the bitter truth.  “I deceived you.  You were married to your beast of a husband lawfully enough; but as you would not leave him willingly, I determined that you should leave him any way.  And so I bribed the justice to deceive you.”

“You-bribed-the-justice-to-deceive-me?”

“Yes, bribed him.  Do you understand?  You see now what your cursed beauty has brought you to?”

She stood before him white and silent.

He had risen, and they were confronting each other with their sins and their sorrows between them.

It was as if a flash of lightning had in an instant lit up the darkness of her whole existence, and she saw in one swift glance not only her misery, but her sin.  He was cruel; but he was right.  She had been ignorant; but she had not been altogether innocent.  There was a period in this tragedy when she had gone against the vague but powerful protest of her soul.  With a swift and true perception she traced her present sorrow to that moment in the twilight when, against that protest, she besought David to accompany them on their travels.  She felt, but did not observe nor heed that admonition.  She had even forgotten it, but now it rose vividly before her memory.

These moments of revision, when the logic of events throws into clear light the vaguely perceived motives of the soul, are always dramatic and often terrible.

It was Pepeeta who broke the silence following David’s outburst.  In a voice preternaturally calm, she said, “We are in the presence of God, and I demand of you the truth.  Is what you have told me true?”

“As true as life.  As true as death.  As true as hell,” he answered bitterly.

“This, then,” she said, “is the clue to all this mystery.  The tangled thread has begun to unravel.  Many times this suspicion has forced itself upon my mind; but it was too terrible to believe!  And yet I, who could not endure the suspicion, must now support the reality.”