Helen was still clutching at his arm, crying to him, “David, spare me!” He flung her off in a mad frenzy, holding her at arm’s length, and staring at her with a fearful light in his eyes.  “Girl, girl!” he cried, “do you know who I am—­do you know what I have done?  This girl was like you once, and I made her love me—­made her love me with the sacred fire that God had given me, made her love me as I made you love me!  And she was beautiful like you—­she was younger than you, and as happy as you!  And she trusted me as you trusted me, she gave herself to me as you did, and I took her, and promised her my love—­and now look at her!  Can you wish to be near me, can you wish to see me?  Oh, Helen, I cannot bear myself—­oh, leave me, I must die!”

He sank down once more, weeping, all his form shaking with his grief; Helen flung her arms about his neck again, but the man seemed to forget her presence.  “Oh, think where that woman has been,” he moaned; “think what she has seen, and done, and suffered—­and what she is!  Was there ever such a wreck of womanhood, ever such a curse upon earth?  And, oh, for the years that she has lived in her fearful sin, and I have been happy—­great God, what can I do for those years,—­how can I live and gaze upon this crime of mine?  I, who sought for beauty, to have made this madness; and it comes now to curse me, now, when it is too late; when the life is wrecked,—­when it is gone forever!”

David’s voice had sunk into a moan; and then suddenly he heard the woman crying out, and he staggered to his feet.  She was sitting up again, her arms stretched out; David caught her in his own, gazing into her face and crying, “Mary, Mary!  Look at me!  Here I am—­I am David, the David you loved.”

He stopped, gasping for breath, and the woman cried in a faint voice, “Water, water!” David turned and called to Helen, and the poor girl, tho scarcely able to stand, ran to get a glass of it; another thought came to the man in the meantime, and he turned to the other with a sudden cry.  “If there were a child!” he gasped, “a child of mine somewhere in the world, alone and helpless!” He stared into the woman’s eyes imploringly.

She was gazing at him, choking and trying to speak; she seemed to be making an effort to understand him, and as David repeated his agonizing question she gave a sign of assent, causing a still wilder look to cross the man’s face.  He called to her again to tell him where; but the woman seemed to be sinking back into her raving, and she only gasped faintly again for water.

When Helen brought it they poured it down her throat, and then David repeated his question once more; but he gave a groan as he saw that it was all in vain; the wild raving had begun again, and the woman only stared at him blankly, until at last the wretched man, quite overcome, sank down at her side and buried his head upon her shrunken bosom and cried like a child, poor Helen in the meantime clinging to him still.