"All those women are back of me! I have never lived one hour out of the shadow of their presence. Their cause is my cause, and when I forget them, may God forget me!" "_Your_ cause!--my wife!" he half whispered, as he dropped her hand, and the blue eyes swept her over with a glance of horror. "Who are you that their cause should be yours?" "Until this morning I was Madame La Marquise de Caron," she said, making a half mocking inclination of her head; "in the bill of sale you read today I was named Rhoda Larue, the slave girl who--" "No!" He caught her fiercely by the shoulder, and his face had a murderous look as he bent above her, "don't dare to say it! You are mad with the desire to hurt me because I resent your sympathy with the North! But, dear, your madness has made you something more terrible than you realize! Judithe, for God's sake, never say that word again!" "For God's sake, that is, for truth's sake, I am telling you the thing that is!" He half staggered to the table, and stood there looking at her; her gaze met his own, and all the tragedy of love and death was in that regard. "_You_!" he said, as though it was impossible to believe the thing he heard. "You--of all women! God!--it is too horrible! What right have you to tell me now? I was happy each moment I thought you loved me; even my anger against you was all jealousy! I was willing to forgive even the spy work, shield you, trust you, _love_ you--but--now--" He paused with his hand over his eyes as though to shut out the sight of her, she was so beautiful as she stood there--so appealing. The dark eyes were wells of sadness as she looked at him. She stood as one waiting judgment and hoping for no mercy. "You have punished me for a thing that was not my fault," he continued. "I destroyed it--the accursed paper, and--" "And by destroying it you gave me back to the Loring estate," she said, quietly. All the passion had burned itself out; she spoke wearily and without emotion. "That is, I have become again, the property of my half sister, my father's daughter! Are the brutal possibilities of your social institution so very far in the past?" He could only stare at her; the horror of it was all too sickening, and that man who was dying in the other room had caused it all; he had moved them as puppets in the game of life, a malignant Fate, who had made all this possible. "Now, will you go?" she asked, pleadingly. "You may trust me now; I have told you all." But he did not seem to hear her; only that one horrible thought of what she was to him beat against his brain and dwarfed every other consideration. "And you--married me, knowing this?" "I married you because I knew it," she said, despairingly. "I thought you and Matthew Loring equally guilty--equally deserving of punishment. I fought against my own feelings--my own love for you--" "Love!"