"Here I am," he cried, "telling myself it is better to battle against the strongest feeling of my life because I am 'different'--because there is a kind of taint in my blood. I don't begin as other men do by hoping. I begin by despairing, and yet I can't give up. How it will end, God knows!" "I understand you better than you think," she said. Something in her voice startled him. "What!" he exclaimed. "Has my mother----" He stopped and gazed at her, wondering. Some powerful emotion he could not comprehend expressed itself in her face. "She does not speak of it often," she said. "She thinks of it always." "Yes," he answered. "I know that. She is afraid. She is haunted by her dread of it--and," his voice dropping, "so am I." He felt it almost unnatural that he should speak so freely. He had found it rather difficult to accustom himself to her presence in the house, sometimes he had even been repelled by it, and yet, just at this moment, he felt somehow as if they stood upon the same platform and were near each other. "It will break loose some day," he cried. "And the day is not far off. I shall run the risk and either win or lose. I fight hard for every day of dull quiet I gain. When I look back over the past I feel that perhaps I am holding a chained devil; but when I look forward I forget, and doubt seems folly." "In your place," she said, "I would risk my _life_ upon it!" The passion in her voice amazed him. He comprehended even less clearly than before. "_I_ know what it has cost," she said. "No one better. I am afraid to pass the door of the room where it lies, in the dark. It is like a dead thing, always there. Sometimes I fancy it is not alone and that the door might open and show me some one with it." "What do you mean?" he said. "You speak as if----" "You would not understand if I should tell you," she answered a little bitterly. "We are not very good friends--perhaps we never shall be--but I will tell you this again, that in your place I would never give it up--never! I would be true to _him_, if all the world were against me!" She went away and shortly afterward he left the room himself, intending to go upstairs. As he reached the bottom of the staircase, a light from above fell upon his face and caused him to raise it. The narrow passage itself was dark, but on the topmost stair his mother stood holding a lamp whose light struck upon him. She did not advance, but waited as he came upward, looking down at him, not speaking. Then they passed each other, going their separate ways. The next day Ffrench appeared in the engine-room itself. He had come to see Murdoch, and having seen him went away in most excellent humor. "What's he after?" inquired Floxham, when he was gone. "He wants me at his house," said Murdoch. "He says he needs my opinion in some matter."