“As I thought!” he said. “As I might have known! You may come out of your hiding-place. No subterfuge will serve either of you. Go—both of you! Let me never see you again!” “Damnation!” said Montague. The vision flashed away from him. He saw only the red fire of his wrath. Then, strangely, the vision returned. He saw her again—a woman of amazing possibilities, a woman to dream about, a woman to love. . . . He took her cold hand very firmly into his own and led her forth. She tried to resist him, to free herself. He knew that later. At the time he realized but the one overmastering determination to vindicate himself and her in the eyes of the denunciatory prophet. He strode forward and confronted him. “Damnation!” he said again, and he flung the word with all the force of his fury. “Who are you to dare to speak to either of us in this strain? What the devil do you mean by it?” He spoke as one man speaking to another, but the calm gesture of the Bishop’s uplifted hand dispelled the situation before it could be established. “Who am I?” he said. “I am a priest of the Lord to whom profanity is no more than the vapouring of fools. How do I dare to speak to you thus? I have never flinched from my duty in the bold rebuke of vice. What do I mean? I mean that you and this woman have been detected by me on the very verge of sin. And I tell you to go, because I cannot stop your sinning until you have endured your hell and—if God is merciful—begun to work out your own salvation.” “The man is mad!” said Montague. A moment before, he had been in a mood to take him by the throat, but now he paused, arrested by the fanatical fervour of the Bishop’s speech. Quite suddenly he realized that neither argument nor indignation would have the smallest effect. And, curiously, his anger cooled. Any other man he would have hurled into the placid waters of the lake without an instant’s hesitation. But this man was different. Almost involuntarily he accorded him the indulgence which the abnormal can practically always command. He turned very quietly to the woman whose hand had closed convulsively in his own, but who stood beside him, immobile and emotionless as a statue. “Miss Thorold,” he said, “I must apologize to you for—quite inadvertently—placing you in this extraordinary situation. The whole thing is too monstrous for discussion. I only ask you to believe that I regret it from the bottom of my heart, and I beg that you will not allow anything so outrageous to prejudice you with regard to the future.” Her eyes were downcast. She heard him without raising them. And still no shade of feeling crossed her death-white face as she made reply. “I am not likely to do that,” she said coldly and proudly. “I am not likely to blame you for showing kindness to me in the house of one whom mercy and humanity are unknown. I do not hold you responsible for another man’s wickedness.”