"As I have told you--in his own words as nearly as I have been able to recall them." "He was right. There is no man in the world I honor more than I honor you. I would accept what you say against my own convictions, against my own feelings. Advise me, doctor. My mind is distracted--I cannot be guided by it. You know what I am, you know what I have been, you foresee the future that lies before me. Advise me." The moment he dreaded had arrived. The issue was with him. He felt that this woman's fate was in his hands. "My advice is," he said in a low tone, "that you accept Mr. Gordon's offer." "And cast aside a mother's duty?" "What did you cast aside," he asked sadly, "when you went with your child on such a night as this toward the sea?" She shuddered. She would not look at her child; with stern resolution she kept her eyes from wandering to the spot upon which the infant lay. She even moved away from the little body so that she should not come in contact with it. A long silence ensued, which Dr. Spenlove dared not break. "I cannot blame him," she then said, her voice now and again broken by a sob, "for making conditions. It is his respectability that is at stake, and he is noble and generous for taking such a risk upon himself. It would be mockery for me to say that I love my child with a love equal to that I should have felt if she had come into the world without the mark of shame with which I have branded her. With my love for her was mingled a loathing of myself, a terror of the living evidence of my fall. But I love her, doctor, I love her--and never yet so much as now when I am asked to part with her! What I did a while ago was done in a frenzy of despair; I had no food, you see, and she was crying for it; and the horror and the anguish of that hour may overpower me again if I am left as I am. I will accept Mr. Gordon's offer, and I will be as good a wife to him as it is in my power to be--but I, also, have a condition to make. Mr. Gordon is much older than I, and it may be that I shall outlive him. The condition I make is--and whatever the consequences I am determined to abide by it--that in the event of my husband's death and of there being no children of our union, I shall be free to seek the child I am called upon to desert. In everything else I will perform my part of the contract faithfully. Take my decision to Mr. Gordon, and if it is possible for you to return here to-night with his answer I implore you to do so. I cannot close my eyes, I cannot rest, until I hear the worst. God alone knows on which side lies the right, on which the wrong!" "I will return with his answer," said Dr. Spenlove, "to-night."