The sword with which these words pierced the advocate was too sharp for his fortitude. His wounds of that day had left him faint and spent with the blood that had flowed from his veins. He grew frail and numb. “You had better hear the truth,” he said, gasping. “It is the death-knell of us both, but there is a limit to mortal endurance. I would have you divorce the instrument from his works. Your Cloud-dweller is not a god, but even as yourself a thing of dross and clay.” “I deny it, I deny it,” said the woman, in a voice of passion. The man seemed to cower before the anguish of her eyes. “You owe your deliverance to an unworthy instinct which rendered me invulnerable.” “Unworthy, my deliverer!” “A thousand times unworthy, poor deluded one. It was not for the sake of the abandoned wretch who was presented to my mind, that I bought her life and freedom. It was not for her, it was not even for her cause that I spent the last drop of my power.” “It was not, then, a divine magnanimity that taught you to forget my stains?” “No.” “It was not that you drew your sword for a marvellous gospel--for a gospel that dazzled the poor outcast in the dock with its magnificence?” “No, no.” “Then why did your voice seem to wail like a flute? Why did you pluck the back of your hands until the blood flowed from them? Why did you conclude in a whisper so gentle that it could only be heard by the spirit?” “I was in a frenzy of avarice. I was fighting for myself.” “No, no! Your words were inspired from heaven.” “No, no! It was no more than the baleful power of the earth. I was fighting for a roof over my head, regular meals, a reputation, material needs.” A thrill passed through the eyes of the woman. They seemed suddenly to be blinded by a thousand black thoughts she had half-forgotten. She sprang to her feet, possessed by an excitement that he who had made his pitiful confession was afraid to plumb. She placed her hands on his shoulders and peered into his face; and he did not shrink from contact with her, for by some occult power, which was her own genie, her own special and peculiar gift, he was disarmed. “You have the voice, the bearing, of a god,” she said, quivering with terror, “but your speech belongs to the underworld whence I have come. Persist in it and we return to it together, walking hand in hand.” The advocate strove feebly to escape from the demonic faculty which already had been exerted upon him. She resisted him mournfully. “You cannot put me off, my deliverer. Henceforward your ways are my ways. I go with you to the bright fields of your native kingdom, or I return to the horrors of my own. I beseech you to take me by the hand and lead me along the golden paths to those mountain fastnesses in which you were born, in which the sun shines forever. You know how I have been dreaming that some saint and hero would lead me to them; you must make my dreams come true again, my deliverer, as you did but yesterday.”