“Do I hold up my head as it is?” asked Halleck. “Did you ever see a more abject dog than I am at this moment? Your wounds are faithful, Atherton; but perhaps you might have spared me this last stab. If you want to know, I can assure you that I don't feel any melodramatic vainglory. I know that I'm running away because I'm beaten, but no other man can know the battle I've fought. Don't you suppose I know how hideous this thing is? No one else can know it in all its ugliness!” He covered his face with his hands. “You are right,” he said, when he could find his voice. “I suffer guiltily. I must have known it when I seemed to be suffering for pity's sake; I knew it before, and when you said that love without marriage was a worse hell than any marriage without love, you left me without refuge: I had been trying not to face the truth, but I had to face it then. I came away in hell, and I have lived in hell ever since. I had tried to think it was a crazy fancy, and put it on my failing health; I used to make believe that some morning I should wake and find the illusion gone. I abhorred it from the beginning as I do now; it has been torment to me; and yet somewhere in my lost soul--the blackest depth, I dare say!--this shame has been so sweet,--it is so sweet,--the one sweetness of life--Ah!” He dashed the weak tears from his eyes, and rose and buttoned his coat about him. “Well, I shall go. And I hope I shall never come back. Though you needn't mention this to my father as an argument for my going when you talk me over with him,” he added, with a glimmer of his wonted irony. He waited a moment, and then turned upon his friend, in sad upbraiding: “When I came to you a year and a half ago, after I had taken that ruffian home drunk to her--Why didn't you warn me then, Atherton? Did you see any danger?” Atherton hesitated: “I knew that, with your habit of suffering for other people, it would make you miserable; but I couldn't have dreamed this would come of it. But you've never been out of your own keeping for a moment. You are responsible, and you are to blame if you are suffering now, and can find no safety for yourself but in running away.” “That's true,” said Halleck, very humbly, “and I won't trouble you any more. I can't go on sinning against her belief in me here, and live. I shall go on sinning against it there, as long as I live; but it seems to me the harm will be a little less. Yes, I will go.”