“Well, I see you are here,” he said, drawing a chair to the table.

“And waiting,” a deep and rich but melancholy voice replied.

“Can’t we have a couple of candles?  These shadows seem to crawl up my legs and take me by the throat.  I feel as if some one were blindfolding and gagging me,” said David, looking uneasily about.

The judge ordered the candles, and while they were waiting observed:  “You had better accustom yourself to shadows, young man, for you will find plenty of them on the road you are traveling.  They deepen with the passing years, along every pathway; but the one on which you are about to set your feet leads into the hopeless dark.”

These unexpected words agitated the soul of the young plotter, but while he was still shuddering the barkeeper entered with the candles and set them down on the table between the two men, who found themselves vis-a-vis in the flickering gleams.

They leaned on their elbows and looked into each other’s faces.  The contrast was remarkable.  The countenance of the judge had unquestionably once been noble, and perhaps also beautiful; but the massive features were now coarsened by dissipation.  A permanent curl of scorn had wreathed itself around the mouth.  A look of ennui brooded over his features.  One would as soon expect to see a flower in the crater of a volcano as a smile on the lips of this extinct man.

David’s face was young and beautiful.  The features were still those of a saint, even if the aureole had for a time been eclipsed by a cloud.  These two human beings gazed incredulously at each other for a moment.

“I was once like this youth,” the judge was saying to himself with a sigh.

“I shall never be like this beast,” thought David with a shudder of repulsion and disgust.

The “Justice” (grotesque parody) broke the silence.

“Did you succeed?” he asked.

“No,” said David, sullenly.

“She would not yield, then?”

“No more than adamant or steel.”

“You should have pressed her harder.”

“I used my utmost skill.”

“You are a novitiate, perhaps.  An adept would have succeeded.”

“Not with her.”

“Ah! who ever caught a trout at the first cast?  What you need is experience.”

“What I want is help.”

“And so you have appealed to me?  You wish me to go to this woman and tell her that her marriage was a fraud?”

“I do.”

“There have been pleasanter tasks.”

“Will you do it, or will you not?”

“Suppose she will not believe me?”

“You must compel her.”

“Young man, have you no compunctions about this business?” said the judge, leaning forward and looking earnestly into the blue eyes.

“Compunctions?” said David, in a dry echo of the question.

“Yes, compunctions,” replied the judge, repeating the word again.