“No, not the confession, but the fact,” Wilford answered, savagely.  “How do you reconcile your acknowledged love for Katy with the injunctions of the Bible whose doctrines you indorse?”

“A man cannot always control his feelings, but he can strive to overcome them and put the temptation aside.  One does not sin in being tempted, but in listening to the temptation.”

“Then according to your own reasoning you have sinned, for you not only have teen tempted, but have yielded to the temptation,” Wilford retorted, with a sinister look of exultation in his black eyes.

For a moment Morris was silent, while a struggle of some kind seemed going on in his mind, and then he said: 

“I never thought to lay open to you a secret which, after myself, is, I believe, known to only one living being.”

“And that one—­is—­you will not tell me that is Katy?” Wilford exclaimed, his voice hoarse with passion, and his eyes flashing with fire.

“No, not Katy.  She has no suspicion of the pain which, since I saw her made another’s, has eaten into my heart, making me grow old so fast, and blighting my early manhood.”

Something in Morris’ tone and manner inspired Wilford with awe, making him relax his grasp upon the arm, and sending him back to his chair while Morris continued: 

“Most men would shrink from talking to a husband of the love they bore his wife, and an hour ago I should have shrunk from it, too, but you have forced me to it, and now you must listen while I tell you of my love for Katy.  It began longer ago than she can remember—­began when she was my baby sister, and I hushed her in my arms to sleep, kneeling by her cradle and watching her with a feeling I have never been able to define.  She was in all my thoughts, her face upon the printed page of every book I studied, and her voice in every strain of music I ever heard.  Then, when she grew older, I used to watch the frolicsome child by the hour, building castles even then of the future, when she would be a woman and I a man, with a man’s right to win her.  I know that she shielded me from many a snare into which young men are apt to fall, for when the temptation was greatest, and I was at its verge, a thought of her was sufficient to lead me back to virtue.  I carried her in my heart across the sea, and said when I go back I will ask her to be mine.  I went back, but at my first meeting with Katy after her return from Canandaigua she told me of you, and I knew then that hope for me was gone, praying for strength to bear my loss and hide my love from her.  God grant that you nor she may never experience what I experienced on that day which made her your wife, and I saw her go away.  It seemed almost as if God had forgotten me as the night after the bridal I sat alone at home, and met that dark hour of sorrow.  In the midst of it Helen came, discovering my secret, and sympathizing with me until the pain at my heart grew less, and