“How can you still pretend to believe in us?” she said, in a low even voice. “How can you bear to remain so staunch against your own inner conviction? From the moment I knew that you had seen that advertisement and the name, I knew that the end was come. And it _is_ come, though still not, in your unswerving chivalry, at your instance. The sentence shall be mine. Your great heart shall not suffer any longer this torture of a trust that dies so hard. I will tear it out with my own hands--I daresay because its pain hurts me too, and not from any moral heroism. Mr Balm, there is no such person as Winsom Wyllie; there never was such a person, except in the silly story from which I borrowed the name for my own purposes, never dreaming that the haphazard choice would recoil upon my head like this. He, and that scientific father, and the butterfly-hunting, and the will and the persecution were all pure concoctions from beginning to end. I have been in Switzerland, but only with my brother Herbert here. Yes, he is my brother, and we are liars and impostors from first to last.” He stirred, with a suggestion of unsteadiness, and stiffening himself, walked to the window and stood looking out of it, his back turned to her. She put a hand one moment to her eyes, and, following, spoke on in her resolute self-abasement:-- “If you will listen, it is right that you should be told all. I plead, and am going to plead nothing whatever in extenuation, save that when I elaborated that wicked lie, my education of the heart had not even been begun. I have learnt much, travelled far since then. A whole continent seems to lie between my present and my past understandings, and looking across it I see the track of bleeding feet, multitudes of them, wandering this way, and I shiver and hide my face to think how, of all the deceits and hypocrisies they include, my own vile shadow, far off over the waste, figures for the first and worst.” She put a hand to her bosom, panting a little. Her brother came creeping out of the darkness, and, standing near her, spoke for the first time. “Not hers alone, sir. I am as much to blame, and more.” Gilead made a movement, as if impatient of the interruption, and he shrank back.