Leah nodded. "There is a doctor in Vienna," she whispered, inventing recklessly with the cunning of one driven to bay; "he has found out a cure, I hear. If Jim will take me over----" "I'll telegraph to Hengist Castle at once," cried Kaimes, making for the door impetuously. "And come back to dinner," said she, following, "I can't pass the evening alone." "I shall come." "But you won't frighten me any more with this religious talk?" Lionel pressed her hand sadly. "I have done what I could, Leah. Only the Holy Spirit can bring home conviction to your heart. Try and pray." "Yes," assented the Duchess, submissively; "it is all that is left." "Then the better part, which cannot be taken away, is left." He went away quite deceived, since she had suggested the Viennese physician so calmly. He thought that she still hoped desperately, and for all he knew the hope might be fulfilled, seeing the present-day resources of science. Certainly he never dreamed how she had hoodwinked him, and so sped on his errand of mercy, leaving behind him a woman too broken to exult in the success of her final piece of trickery. It was all over. Man could do nothing; God would do nothing. As Demetrius had been smitten for the crime she had induced him to commit, so was she being punished for the evil she had called into being. Lionel had talked nonsense, of course; but he left behind him a feeling in her mind that the God he worshipped did exist. How the belief had come into her heart, she could not say; but it was certainly there. Try as she might, with all the strength of her brilliant intellect, she knew that never again could she be an atheist. God existed to her comprehension at last. But the newly-conceived Deity was not the Father of love and light. Rather did He appear an omnipotent tyrant, who had driven her to bad courses by giving her tastes she was unable to satisfy, and who now punished her for acting as the nature He had given her dictated. She was like a mouse in the claws of a cat, and could no more escape than could the tormented little beast. Only to the height of acknowledging that Something much stronger than herself existed could she rise; and her submission was as that of Caliban to Prospero. Wrenched violently from the egotistic wrappings of her soul, she--the true self, the immortal spirit--stood naked and shamed, yet defiant. She submitted, because only submission was left. But all her flesh shouted furiously against its victor.