The man raised his eyes and gazed at her helplessly.  “Helen,” he said, his voice sounding hollow and strange, “what can you ask of me?  How can I bear to look about me again, how can I think of living?  Oh, that night of horror!  Helen, it burns my brain—­it tortures my soul—­it will drive me mad!” He buried his face in his hands again, shaking with emotion.  “Oh, I cannot ever forget it,” he whispered hoarsely; “it must haunt me, haunt me until I die!  I must know that after all my years of struggle it was this that I made, it is this that stands for my life—­and it is over, and gone from me forever and finished!  Oh, God, was there ever such a horror flashed upon a guilty soul—­ever such fiendish torture for a man to bear?  And Helen, there was a child, too—­think how that thought must goad me—­a child of mine, and I cannot ever aid it—­it must suffer for its mother’s shame.  And think, if it were a woman, Helen—­this madness must go on, and go on forever!  Oh, where am I to hide me; and what can I do?”

There came no tears, but only a fearful sobbing; poor Helen whispered frantically, “David, it was not your fault, you could not help it—­surely you cannot be to blame for all this.”

He did not answer her, but after a long silence he went on in a deep, low voice, “Helen, she was so beautiful!  She has lived in my thoughts all these years as the figure that I used to see, so bright and so happy; I used to hear her singing in church, and the music was a kind of madness to me, because I knew that she loved me.  And her home was a little farm-house, half buried in great trees, and I used to see her there with her flowers.  Now—­oh, think of her now—­think of her life of shame and agony—­think of her turned away from her home, and from all she loved in the world,—­deserted and scorned, and helpless—­think of her with child, and of the agony of her degradation!  What must she not have suffered to be as she was last night—­oh, are there tears enough in the world to pay for such a curse, for that twenty years’ burden of wretchedness and sin?  And she was beaten—­oh, she was beaten—­Mary, my poor, poor Mary!  And to die in such horror, in drunkenness and madness!  And now she is gone, and it is over; and oh, why should I live, what can I do?”

His voice dropped into a moan, and then again there was a long silence.  At last Helen whispered, in a weak, trembling voice, “David, you have still love; can that be nothing to you?”

“I have no right to love,” he groaned, “no right to love, and I never had any.  For oh, all my life this vision has haunted me—­I knew that nothing but death could have saved her from shame!  Yes, and I knew, too, that some day I must find her.  I have carried the terror of that in my heart all these years.  Yet I dared to take your love, and dared to fly from my sin; and then there comes this thunderbolt—­oh, merciful heaven, it is too much to bear, too much to bear!” He sank down again; poor Helen could find no word of comfort, no utterance of her own bursting heart except the same frantic clasp of her love.