His voice had risen to a shout, but a sudden lump in his throat silenced it, for the boy was weeping again. "Oh," wept the boy, "if you've liked me at _all_, put it off as long as you can, for you'll make me tell you I hate you, and _why_ I hate you!" "_Hate_ me?" It had struck Henry Montagu like a flail in the face, wiping away his anger, his astonishment at the boy's uncanny knowledge, even his astonishment that the word was able to strike him so. "I--I've suffered enough through you!" he stammered painfully. "And if I've got to suffer more, I insist on doing it now and getting it over with!" "Don't! don't! It will _never_ be over with!" gulped the boy. "I'm _through_!" cried Mr. Montagu. "_Who_ are you? _What_ are you?" At the determined finality of the voice the boy quivered like a helpless thing, and his stuttering ejaculations came as if shaken out of him by the shivering of his body. "Wh--_who_ am I?" "_Yes!_" "Wh--_what_ am I?" "_Yes!_" Never yet had he been so awful as in the torment and majesty that gazed like fate at Henry Montagu now, and the frightful fire of the eyes seemed to dry up the tears on his cheeks at its first flare of accusing righteousness. "_I'm the child that you and your wife refused to have!_" As the aghast man shrank back before his blighting fury, he leaned farther and farther toward him. "_Now_ do you know why I hate you as no human thing can hate? _Your wilful waste has made my hideous want!_ Now do you know why I said I'd done a more terrific thing than had ever been done in the world's history before? _I've gotten in!_ At last, at last, I've gotten in, in spite of you, and after she was dead! I've done a greater and more impossible thing than that great Mystery the world adores! I've gotten in despite you, and without even a _woman's_ help! When we spoke of _that_ life once before to-night, I shocked you! Do you believe _now_ that my history is more terrible, or not? He suffered, and suffered, and He died. But He'd _lived_! His torture was a few hours--for mine to-night, I've waited almost as many years as He did, and to what end? _To nothing!_ God, God, do you see _that_?" He twisted open his hands and held out his bruised wrists before the trembling man's eyes. "For all those years--" He suddenly drew himself to his full height and threw them passionately above his head in the posture that had haunted Henry Montagu from the first instant's glimpse of him.