'That old spirit is not dead, but sleeping, Roland. You have not driven it forth. It is your own still. You have only silenced its voice for a while. You think that you have killed it; but you remember it still. Thank God! it has been only sleeping. If it were dead you would not remember. Let it wake again. Oh! Roland--let it wake again--again. Oh! Roland--Roland--my friend and Master----' She could say no more. The man raised his head. It is a shameful and a terrible thing to see the face of a man who is disgraced and conscious of his shame. Perhaps it is worse to see the face of a man who is disgraced and is unconscious of his shame. He looked round, and saw the tears in the girl's eyes and the quivering of her lips. 'The man you remember,' he said hoarsely, 'is dead and buried. He died three years ago and more. Another man--a poor and mean creature--walks about in his shape. He is unworthy to be in your presence. Suffer him to go, and think of him no longer.' 'Not another man, because you remember the former. Roland, come back, my old friend; come back!' 'It is too late.' But he wavered. 'It is never too late. Oh! I wonder--was it the Way of Pleasure or was it the Way of Wealth?' 'Do I look,' he asked bitterly, 'as if it was the Way of Pleasure?' 'It is not too late, Roland. You have sinned against yourself. If it were too late you would be happy after the kind of those who can live in sin and be happy. Since you are not happy, it is not too late. The doors of heaven stand open night and day for all.' 'You talk the old language, Armorel.' 'It is the language of my soul. I will say the same thing in any tongue you please, so that you understand me.' 'To go back--to begin all over again--to go on as if the last three years had never been----' 'Yes--yes--as if they had never been! That is best. As if they had never been.' 'Armorel, do you know,' he asked her quickly--'do you know the thing--the Awful Thing--that I have done?' 'Do not tell me. Never tell me.' 'Some day, I think I must. What shall I say, now?' 'Say that your footsteps are turned in the old way, Roland.' He pushed back the chair and stood up. Now, if they had been measured, he would have proved four inches and a half taller than the girl, for he was half an inch short of six feet, and she was exactly five feet seven. Yet as they stood face to face, it seemed to him--and to her as well--as if she towered over him by as many inches as separate the tallest woman from the smallest man. Nature thus accommodates herself to the mental condition of the moment. The small man, however, did a very strange thing. He drew forth a pocket-book and took from it what Armorel perceived to be a cheque. This he deliberately tore across twice, and threw the fragments into the fire. 'You do not understand this act, Armorel. It is the turning of the footstep.' She took his hand and pressed it. 'I pray,' she said, 'that the way may prove less thorny than you think!'