“Oh, why did you come to me?” cried Northcote weakly, as he strove in vain to free himself of the yoke that was already on his neck. He seemed hardly to understand that he had to deal with a desperate gambler who was staking all upon a final cast. “Do not let me perish,” cried the woman. “Do not say this is an illusion upon which I have built my miraculous faith. Do not tell me that the gods walk the earth no more!” The tragic distension of her countenance filled the young man with horror, yet also with a sense of its weird poetry. “You must not hurl me back into the abyss out of which I have crawled with bare life,” she cried, seizing his hands with an astounding passion. “You are the god who has breathed upon the poor outcast who knows no heaven apart from your nobility; you cannot, you must not, reject her.” Again the wretched creature sank down upon her knees before him. XXXV DELILAH As Northcote gazed upon her, despair beat him down like a flail. It was not for him, man of genius as he was, to heal this outcast with his touch. Only a perfect chastity could do that; and this was the jewel with which he had parted two days before to save her from the gallows. If he touched her now, it would be as the inhabitant of her own level. She cried for the living god, yet now he was become a counterfeit of arid clay. She had asked for bread, and he had only a stone to yield. “You must go,” he said, and the words seemed to thicken as they fell from his throat. “You must fly from me. I have nothing to offer you.” The woman shuddered and clasped him by the ankles, but otherwise made no sign that she had heard. “My power is gone,” he said. “I am no longer the strong and valiant one, but the poor outcast even as are you. Two days ago I flung my birthright away.” “Will you send me back to the charnel-house?” said the woman with a low moan. Northcote drew up his body rigidly, erectly. “I have no choice,” were the words that were forced from between his lips. Vein by vein the creature before him was invaded by death. She crouched lower and lower upon the ground until she was no more than a shapeless and ignominious mass on the bare boards in front of the fire. Every line of her body was merged and outspread into something amorphous, without form. Her helplessness was too complete to arouse pity. Such a flaccidity was greater than that of an infant, whose frame is too puny even to allow it to crawl. Northcote had no disgust. He had too sharp a sense of horror that the power should be denied to him to succor such an invertebrate thing. Presently, by an effort which seemed to shatter her flesh, the creature was able to move. She rose from her knees, issuing from the state of coma with all the heavy and desperate pangs of one who attempts to throw off the fumes of a deadly venom. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hands, and folded her arms in front of her.