"How, under God, you could have punished her as you did--how you could have reconciled your conscience to the invocation of a brutal law which rehabilitated you at the expense of the woman who had been your wife--how you could have done this in the name of duty and of conscience, I can not comprehend. "I do not believe that one drop of your blood runs in my veins." He bent forward, laying his hands flat on the cloth, then gripping it fiercely in clenched fists: "All I want of you is what was my mother's. I bear the name she gave me; it pleased her to bestow it; it is good enough for me to wear. If it be hers only, or if it was also my father's, I do not know; but that name, legitimate or otherwise, is not for exchange! I will keep it, Colonel Arran. I am what I am." He hesitated, rigid, clenching and unclenching his hands--then drew a deep, agonised breath: "I suppose you have meant to be just to me, I wish you might have dealt more mercifully with my mother. As for what you have done to me--well--if she was illegally my mother, I had rather be her illegitimate son than the son of any woman who ever lived within the law. Now may I have her letters?" "Is that your decision, Berkley?" "It is. I want only her letters from you--and any little keepsakes--relics--if there be any----" "I offer to recognise you as my son." "I decline--believing that you mean to be just--and perhaps kind--God knows what you do mean by disinterring the dead for a son to look back upon----" "Could I have offered you what I offer, otherwise?" "Man! Man! _You_ have nothing to offer _me_! Your silence was the only kindness you could have done me! You have killed something in me. I don't know what, yet--but I think it was the best part of me." "Berkley, do you suppose that I have entered upon this matter lightly?" Berkley laughed, showing his teeth. "No. It was your damned conscience; and I suppose you couldn't strangle it. I am sorry you couldn't. Sometimes a strangled conscience makes men kinder." Colonel Arran rang. A dark flush had overspread his forehead; he turned to the butler. "Bring me the despatch box which stands on: my study table." Berkley, hands behind his back, was pacing the dining-room carpet. "Would you accept a glass of wine?" asked Colonel Arran in a low voice. Berkley wheeled on him with a terrible smile. "Shall a man drink wine with the slayer of souls?" Then, pallid face horribly distorted, he stretched out a shaking arm. "Not that you ever could succeed in getting near enough to murder _hers_! But you've killed mine. I know now what died in me. It was that! . . . And I know now, as I stand here excommunicated by you from all who have been born within the law, that there is not left alive in me one ideal, one noble impulse, one spiritual conviction. I am what your righteousness has made me--a man without hope; a man with nothing alive in him except the physical brute. . . . Better not arouse that."