For when she looked at her husband her heart scarcely beat for her terror; he was ghastly white, and his lips were trembling, and though he had not shed a tear all the day, there was a look of mournful despair on his face that told more fearfully than any words how utterly the soul within him was beaten and crushed. All that day he had been so, and as Helen remembered the man that had been before so strong and eager and brare, her whole soul stood still with awe; yet as before she could do nothing but cling to him, and gaze at him with bursting heart. But at last when the hours had passed and not a move had been made, she asked him faintly, “David, is there no hope? Is it to be like this always?” The man raised his eyes and gazed at her helplessly. “Helen,” he said, his voice sounding hollow and strange, “what can you ask of me? How can I bear to look about me again, how can I think of living? Oh, that night of horror! Helen, it burns my brain--it tortures my soul--it will drive me mad!” He buried his face in his hands again, shaking with emotion. “Oh, I cannot ever forget it,” he whispered hoarsely; “it must haunt me, haunt me until I die! I must know that after all my years of struggle it was this that I made, it is this that stands for my life--and it is over, and gone from me forever and finished! Oh, God, was there ever such a horror flashed upon a guilty soul--ever such fiendish torture for a man to bear? And Helen, there was a child, too--think how that thought must goad me--a child of mine, and I cannot ever aid it--it must suffer for its mother's shame. And think, if it were a woman, Helen--this madness must go on, and go on forever! Oh, where am I to hide me; and what can I do?” There came no tears, but only a fearful sobbing; poor Helen whispered frantically, “David, it was not your fault, you could not help it--surely you cannot be to blame for all this.” He did not answer her, but after a long silence he went on in a deep, low voice, “Helen, she was so beautiful! She has lived in my thoughts all these years as the figure that I used to see, so bright and so happy; I used to hear her singing in church, and the music was a kind of madness to me, because I knew that she loved me. And her home was a little farm-house, half buried in great trees, and I used to see her there with her flowers. Now--oh, think of her now--think of her life of shame and agony--think of her turned away from her home, and from all she loved in the world,--deserted and scorned, and helpless--think of her with child, and of the agony of her degradation! What must she not have suffered to be as she was last night--oh, are there tears enough in the world to pay for such a curse, for that twenty years' burden of wretchedness and sin? And she was beaten--oh, she was beaten--Mary, my poor, poor Mary! And to die in such horror, in drunkenness and madness! And now she is gone, and it is over; and oh, why should I live, what can I do?”