"It is not cruel."--He came up closer to her.--"You think you do not love me, and see what I have made you! Look at the torpor of this face,--the dead, frozen eyes! It is a 'nightmare, death in life,' Good God, to think that I have done this! To think of the countless days of agony, the nights, the years of solitude that have brought her to this,--little Margaret!" He paced the floor, slowly. She sat down on a low stool, leaning her head on her hands. The little figure, the bent head, the quivering chin brought up her childhood to him. She used to sit so when he had tormented her, waiting to be coaxed back to love and smiles again. The hard man's eyes filled with tears, as he thought of it. He watched the deep, tearless sobs that shook her breast: he had wounded her to death,--his bonny Margaret! She was like a dead thing now: what need to torture her longer? Let him be manly and go out to his solitary life, taking the remembrance of what he had done with him for company. He rose uncertainly,--then came to her: was that the way to leave her? "I am going, Margaret," he whispered, "but let me tell you a story before I go,--a Christmas story, say. It will not touch you,--it is too late to hope for that,--but it is right that you should hear it." She looked up wearily. "As you will, Stephen." Whatever impulse drove the man to speak words that he knew were useless made him stand back from her, as though she were something he was unfit to touch: the words dragged from him slowly. "I had a curious dream to-night, Margaret,--a waking dream: only a clear vision of what had been once. Do you remember--the old time?" What disconnected rambling was this? Yet the girl understood it, looked into the low fire with sad, listening eyes. "Long ago. That was a free, strong life that opened before us then, little one,--before you and me? Do you remember the Christmas before I went away? I had a strong arm and a hungry brain to go out into the world with, then. Something better, too, I had. A purer self than was born with me came late in life, and nestled in my heart. Margaret, there was no fresh loving thought in my brain for God or man that did not grow from my love of you; there was nothing noble or kindly in my nature that did not flow into that love and deepen there. I was your master, too. I held my own soul by no diviner right than I held your love and owed you mine. I understand it, now, when it is too late."--He wiped the cold drops from his face.--"Now do you know whether it is remorse I feel, when I think how I put this purer self away,--how I went out triumphant in my inhuman, greedy soul,--how I resolved to know, to be, to trample under foot all weak love or homely pleasures? I have been punished. Let those years go. I think, sometimes, I came near to the nature of the damned who dare not love: I would not. It was then I hurt you, Margaret,--to the death: your true life lay in me, as mine in you."