He started up suddenly, clasping his hands to his forehead and staggering across the room, crying out, “Oh no, it cannot be, oh, it cannot be!  There must be some way of finding pardon, some way of winning Tightness for a soul!  Oh God, what can I do for peace?” But then again he sank down and hid his face and sobbed out:  “In the face of this nightmare,—­with this horror fronting me! She cried for pardon, and none came.”

After that there was a long silence, with Helen crouching in terror by his side.  She heard him groan:  “It is all over, it is finished—­I can fight no more,” and then again came stillness, and when she lifted him and gazed into his face she knew not which was worse, the silent helpless despair that was upon it, or the torment and the suffering that had gone before.  She tried still to soothe him, begging and pleading with him to have mercy upon her.  He asked her faintly what he could do, and the poor girl, seeing how weak and exhausted he was, could think of only the things of the body, and begged him to try to rest.  “It has been two nights since you have slept, David,” she whispered.

“I cannot sleep with this burden upon my soul,” he answered her; but still she pleaded with him, begging him as he loved her; and he yielded to her at last, and broken and helpless as he was, she half carried him upstairs and laid him upon the bed as if he had been a little child.  That seemed to help little, however, for he only lay tossing and moaning, “Oh, God, it must end; I cannot bear it!”

Those were the last words Helen heard, for the poor girl was exhausted herself, almost to fainting; she lay down, without undressing, and her head had scarcely touched the pillow before she was asleep.  In the meantime, through the long night-watches David lay writhing and crying out for help.

The moon rose dim and red behind the mountains,—­it had mounted high in the sky, and the room was bright with it, when at last the man rose from the bed and began swiftly pacing the room, still muttering to himself.  He sank down upon his knees by the window and gazed up at the silent moon.  Then again he rose and turned suddenly, and after a hurried glance at Helen went to the door and passed out, closing it silently behind him, and whispered to himself, half deliriously, “Oh, great God, it must end!  It must end!”

It was more than an hour afterwards that the girl awakened from her troubled sleep; she lay for an instant half dazed, trying to bring back to her mind what had happened; and then she put out her hand and discovered that her husband was no longer by her.  She sat up with a wild start, and at the same instant her ear was caught by a sound outside, of footsteps pacing swiftly back and forth, back and forth, upon the piazza.  The girl leaped up with a stifled cry, and ran out of the room and down the steps.  The room below was still half lighted by the flickering log-fire, and Helen’s shadow loomed up on the opposite wall as she rushed across the room and opened the door.