"Oh, no! no! do not do that," cried Leam, trying to unclasp his hands. "Do not kneel to me. I ought to kneel to you," she added with a little cry that struck with more than pity to Edgar's heart, and that nearly broke her down for so much relaxing of the strain, so much yielding to her grief, as it included. "Leam, tell me you are joking--tell me that you did not do this awful thing," he cried again, his handsome face, blanched and drawn, upturned to her in agony. She put her hands over her eyes. "I cannot lie to you," she said. "And I must not degrade you. Do not touch me: I am not good enough to be touched by you." He loosened his arms, and she shrank from him almost as if she faded away. "Why did you deceive me?" he groaned. "You should not have let me love you, knowing the truth." "I did not know that you loved me, or that I loved you, till that night," she pleaded piteously. "If I had known I would have prevented it. I have told you as soon as I remembered." "You have broken my heart," he cried, flinging himself on the sofa, his face buried in the cushions. And then, strong man as he was, a brave soldier and an English country gentleman, he burst into a passion of tears that shook him as the storm had shaken the earth last night--tears that were the culmination of his agony, not its relief. Leam stood by him as pale as the shattered lilies in the garden. What could she do? How could she comfort him? Tainted and dishonored, she dared not even lay her hand on his--her infamous and murderous hand, and he so pure and noble! Neither could she pray for him, nor yet for herself. Pray? to whom? To God? God had turned His face away from her, even as her lover had now turned away his: He was angry with her, and still unappeased. She dared not pray to Him, and He would not hear her if she did. The saints were no longer the familiar and parental deities, grave and helpful, to whom she could refer all her sorrows and perplexities, as in earlier times, sure of speedy succor. The teaching of the later days had destroyed the simple fetichism of childhood; and now--afraid of God, by whom she was unforgiven; the saints swept out of her spiritual life like those mist-wreaths of morning which were once taken for solid towers and impregnable fortresses; the Holy Mother vanished with the rest; all spiritual help a myth, all spiritual consolation gone--how could she pray? Lonely as her life had been since mamma died, it had never been so lonely as now, when she felt that God had abandoned her, and that she had sacrificed her lover to her sense of truth and honor and what was due to his nobility.