"The man died? Will it be possible for you to prove yourself innocent?" "It may be possible, but it does not appear easy. I hope to show that all I did was in self-defence. I did not strike the man a deadly blow; in the struggle he fell and was injured on the sharp rocks. In every sense his death was unintentional, yet there is nothing to sustain me but my own testimony. But I shall not flee from the issue. If I have taken human life I will abide the judgment. God knows I never dreamed of killing the man; never once supposed him seriously injured. You, at least, believe this?" "I believe all you tell me." The man's grasp on the casing of the window tightened, his eyes upon the mass of black hair. "Strangely enough," he continued, "this whole affair has gone wrong from the start; nothing has turned out in the natural way. Criminals have been made into officers of the law, and honest men changed into outlaws. Now it seems impossible to conjecture how the adventure will terminate." She sat looking up at him, scarcely seeing his face, her hands clasped in her lap. "'All the world 's a stage, and all the men and women merely players,'" she said, quoting the familiar words as if in a dream. "We are such puppets in the great play! How strange it all is! How dangerously close real life is, always skirting the precipice of tragedy! Plans fail, lines tangle, and lives are changed forever by events seemingly insignificant. To-morrow is always mystery. I wonder, is it not a dim consciousness of this that renders the stage so attractive to the multitude? Even its burlesques, its lurid melodramas, are never utterly beyond the possible. Everywhere are found stranger stories than any romancer can invent; and yet we sometimes term our lives commonplace." She leaned back against the wall, a sob coming into her voice. "What--what is going to be the end of this--for me?" "Whatever you will," he exclaimed passionately, forgetful of all but her power over him. "It is you who must choose." "Yes, it is I who must choose," her face still uplifted. "Because I am not a leaf to float on the air, my destiny decided by a breath of wind, I must choose; yet how can I know I decide rightly? When heart and conscience stand opposed, any decision means sacrifice and pain. I meant those hasty words wrung out of me in shame, and spoken yonder; I meant them then, and yet they haunt me like so many sheeted ghosts. 'Tis not their untruth, but the thought will not down that the real cause of their utterance was not the wrong done me. It had other birth." "In what?" She did not in the least hesitate to answer, her eyes clear and honest upon his own. "In my love for you," she answered, quietly, her cheeks reddening to the frank avowal. He grasped her hands, drawing her, unresisting, toward him. "You confess this to me?"