The sweat started upon Markheim’s brow.  “Well then, what matter?” he exclaimed.  “Say it be lost, say I am plunged again in poverty, shall one part of me, and that the worse, continue until the end to override the better?  Evil and good run strong in me, hailing me both ways.  I do not love the one thing; I love all.  I can conceive great deeds, renunciations, martyrdoms; and though I be fallen to such a crime as murder, pity is no stranger to my thoughts.  I pity the poor; who knows their trials better than myself?  I pity and help them.  I prize love; I love honest laughter; there is no good thing nor true thing on earth but I love it from my heart.  And are my vices only to direct my life, and my virtues to lie without effect, like some passive lumber of the mind?  Not so; good, also, is a spring of acts.”

But the visitant raised his finger.  “For six and thirty years that you have been in this world,” said he, “through many changes of fortune and varieties of humour, I have watched you steadily fall.  Fifteen years ago you would have started at a theft.  Three years back you would have blenched at the name of murder.  Is there any crime, is there any cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil?  Five years from now I shall detect you in the fact!  Downward, downward, lies your way; nor can anything but death avail to stop you.”

“It is true,” Markheim said huskily, “I have in some degree complied with evil.  But it is so with all; the very saints, in the mere exercise of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their surroundings.”

“I will propound to you one simple question,” said the other; “and as you answer I shall read to you your moral horoscope.  You have grown in many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so; and at any account, it is the same with all men.  But granting that, are you in any one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with your own conduct, or do you go in all things with a looser rein?”

“In any one?” repeated Markheim, with an anguish of consideration.  “No,” he added, with despair; “in none!  I have gone down in all.”

“Then,” said the visitor, “content yourself with what you are, for you will never change; and the words of your part on this stage are irrevocably written down.”

Markheim stood for a long while silent, and, indeed, it was the visitor who first broke the silence.  “That being so,” he said, “shall I show you the money?”

“And grace?” cried Markheim.

“Have you not tried it?” returned the other.  “Two or three years ago did I not see you on the platform of revival meetings, and was not your voice the loudest in the hymn?”

“It is true,” said Markheim; “and I see clearly what remains for me by way of duty.  I thank you for these lessons from my soul; my eyes are opened, and I behold myself at last for what I am.”

At this moment, the sharp note of the door-bell rang through the house; and the visitant, as though this were some concerted signal for which he had been waiting, changed at once in his demeanour.