“You, John! is it you? Oh, but you frightened me! I heard something climbing, and was shivering in a corner.” Now John Gore seemed suddenly to forget the eighty feet of space below him. His heart had given a great leap and was drumming against his ribs, for the truth that he had discovered went far beyond his dreams. The window was cut in the thickness of the wall, and the stanchions set deeply in it, so that he contrived to drag himself over the sill and wedge himself there with his face close to the bars. “Thank God,” he said, “that I dared this climb! It was a climb into the dark, dear, but I have found more than ever I sought.” He saw her hands come up to the bars. They touched his face, and then drew back as though she had not thought him so near. Her heart was so full of manifold emotions that for the moment she could not think. The suddenness of it had dizzied her, and yet through the strange tumult of it all she felt an infinite sweet joy. “Barbe!” His voice roused her suddenly to a sense of keen reality. “Speak softly, or they may hear. You—you should not have risked so much.” “Barbe, why are you here, and why did they tell me lies?” “Lies?” “Yes, may God confound them! Come close to the window, dear; you can trust me to the death.” He heard her catch a short, sharp breath as though some one had dashed icy water upon her bosom. “John, I can’t tell you—I can’t!” “Why, child?—come?” “Don’t ask me—don’t ask me anything to-night. I cannot bear it, when you have risked so much.” He could not see her, not even her hands, but he felt that she was very close to him. Assuredly this was not the Barbara of the old sullen days? Her infinite dumb distress went to his heart like wine. “Barbe!” She could not answer him for the moment, her thoughts in a tumult with the miserable secrets of the past. “I cannot—I cannot!” “Tell me, dear; you can trust me.” She was leaning her arms against the wall and her head against her arms. “Oh, I was mad, John, and I think I had no heart—then. You must have heard; they must have given you some reason for this.” The wrath in him flashed out for an instant. “Whether you were mad or not, child, I have no need to ask. They had put me off with lies, and but for God’s mercy I should never have chanced upon the truth.” He heard her move with a little sound of anguish in the throat. “The truth—what truth?” “Why, that you were never mad, Barbara; God even pardon me for uttering the word.” “Mad—only that?” “And does that mean nothing to me—to-night.” She saw that he was only half wise as to the miserable intrigue that had let blood forth, blood that had dimmed her vision and filled her with a hate that now made her shudder. His tenderness would out, beating about her like mysterious movement in the air, making her dizzy and in terror of the past. “Of your goodness, John, don’t ask me anything—don’t ask me anything to-night.”