Explain that, will you?  If my tongue had been torn out by the roots, my eyes would have looked it, and if my eyes had been seared with a red-hot iron, my hands would have written it.  A crime can find a thousand tongues!  And now that I have told it, I feel so much happier.  You would not believe it, Pepeeta.  I am like myself again.  I feel as if I should never be unkind or irritable any more.  The load has fallen from my heart.  Come, now, and kiss me.  Let me take you in my arms.”

Extending his hands, he approached her.  As he did so, the look of horror with which she had regarded him intensified and she retreated before him until she reached the wall, looking like a sea-bird hurled against a precipice by a storm.  Such dread was on her face that he dared not touch her.

“What is the matter?” he said.  “Are you afraid of me?”

She did not reply, but gazed at him as if he were some monster suddenly risen from the deep.  He endured the glance for a single moment, and then, realizing the crime which he had committed had excited an uncontrollable repulsion for him in her soul, he staggered backward and sank once more into his chair, the picture of helpless and hopeless despair.

For a long time Pepeeta gazed at him without moving or speaking.  And then, as she beheld his misery, the look of horror slowly melted into one of pity, until she seemed like an angel who from some vast distance surveys a sinful man.  Gradually she began to realize that he who had committed this dreadful deed was her own lover, and that it was the result of that guilty affection which they bore each other.  The consciousness of her own complicity softened her.  She moved towards him; she spoke.

“Forgive me,” she said, “for seeming even for a moment to despise and abhor you.  It was all so sudden.  I do not mean to condemn you.  I do not mean to act or feel as if I were any less guilty than you are in all this wrong.  But when one has to face something awful without preparation, it is very hard.  No wonder that we do not know what to do.  Who but God can extricate us from this trouble?  We are both guilty, David.  I think that it is because I have had so large a share in all the rest that has been wrong that I cannot now feel towards you as I think I ought.  It is true that you have injured me terribly and irretrievably.  It is true that your hands are stained with blood, and yet I love you!  My heart yearns for you this moment as never before since we have known each other.  I long to take you in my arms.”

He interrupted her by springing from his chair and attempting to embrace her; but she waved him back with a strange majesty in her mien, and continued.  “I long to take you to my heart and comfort you.  I could live with you or I could die with you.  But there is a voice within my soul that tells me that we must part.  Lives cannot be bound together by crime.  While misfortunes and mistakes may knit the hearts of lovers together, evil deeds must force them apart!  We are not lawfully married, and so—­”