"My unselfishness? Good heavens!" In spite of the strangeness of it all, Gaston laughed. Then an impatience stifled him. A brute instinct drove him on. Her beauty had captured his senses, and he meant to tear down the pitiful wall he had upbuilded between her and him, and force her to see the inevitable. He had wondered if she could stir him--well he knew now. What idiots they had both been! He was through with the Past forever. The Past that had held him to a false ideal. There should be no more imbecile philosophy in the North Woods as far as he and she were concerned. "See here," he began, and his voice was almost hard; "don't you know when I shut you away from what you knew as danger--Jude and all the rest of the hell that went with him--I shut you away from what people--people like Drew and his set--know as mercy?" Joyce's eyes widened, but she did not speak. Gaston rushed on--he wanted the scene over. She was too heavenly beautiful sitting there, he must bring her closer. "They would call you--well, they wouldn't call you a good woman. They are very particular about their women. In a way, you must have known this, Joyce. You've played the game like a thoroughbred, and when one considers _how_ you've played it, the wonder grows--but they'd never believe that--even if we told them. Great heavens! how could they, if they saw you? "That there was no other way for me to help you then, that you had no other shelter in God's world would not alter the case at all. And I've been a fool, Joyce, a maudlin fool--all along!" The woman opposite was looking at him through tears, but the sweet mouth was quivering pitifully. "Joyce"; the tone caused the tear-dimmed eyes to close; "let us face the music--and--dance along to the tune." Gaston leaned toward her and when she dared to look at him she saw that the future was in her hands! "You--you thought I knew this all along?" "In a way--yes!" Joyce's eyes dropped and a flush rose to her pale, still face. "Then those--those people--the good people, what would they have thought about you?" "Oh! some would have thought me a--damned scoundrel; and they would have been right had I ever intended to leave you to their mercy. Others--well, others--" "Please tell me, you see I want to understand everything and that world is not mine--you know." "The others,"--and now Gaston dropped his own eyes--"the others would have forgotten all about it--had I chosen to go back!" "But they--would not have forgotten about me?" "No. That is their imbecile code." "And--and men know that and yet--" Her eyes widened in a dumb terror--"why, they are worse than--the people of St. Ange!" Suddenly Gaston flung his head back and looked full at the beautiful face. It was radiant, but the eyes were overflowing. It seemed to him as if she, coming out from her shadows, were bringing all wronged womanhood with her.