"Am I daring to bargain? Am I stipulating, making terms, advancing a price? Remember, remember that I am new before Thee, long out of prayer, long unaccustomed to Thy ways. It is no bargain, O God. It is only confusion of these my thoughts. All that I ask is this--judge me apart from her, use her no longer for me, judge me no more through her, let that which she has done suffice. Look, I will go away from her and leave her. Whether, beneath Thy wisdom, she lives or dies shall nothing prevail with me. If she may live it shall not strengthen me--no bargain there, O God. If she must die it shall not shake me--O God, no bargain there. Judge me apart from her. I will go out of her life. I will go out from every knowledge of Thy will towards her. I will not even pray for her. I will not even pray for her lest in my heart, beneath my words, beneath my thoughts, it is in cunning that actually I am here--agreeable to forego destruction of myself if I may know that she is spared; resolved to kill myself if I be guilty of her death. Enough--enough. Let me end with that while I have clearness of vision to see it. This is my dear, my darling, lying here. I will go out from all knowledge of her. Judge me apart from her. Let that which she has done suffice." He withdrew his hands from her hand as though in evidence of detaching himself from her. He thrust them out again to touch her and cried "Essie! Essie!" He then took them to his face. He said: "Let me speak as a man. I will go out from her. I will live. Let me speak as a man. Let me not make vain promises, offer false protests. This is not religion. Religion, as it is lived, is nothing to me. Let me not delude myself nor seek in cunning to delude Thee. Let me not try to pretend that this that I have suffered converts me suddenly from that which I was to that which Essie is. Let me speak as a man. That is not of a moment. I am not one man in one moment, a new man in the next. I am the same. All my infirmities the same--rooted in me as my bones: bones of my spirit and no more changed than bones of my body that are rooted in my flesh. I am the same. Ay, even as I say it, I am tempted to say that I am not the same but am changed. Rescue me from that cunning. Keep me from that. Let me not even in cunning pretend, in self-delusion believe, that this hour, these thoughts, these torments I have endured will all my life remain with me. I have known penitence before. I have knelt in presence of death before. I have wept. I have vowed. Where are my tears? Where my promises? Let me speak as a man. Time swings on. That which is all the world to-day is less than dust to-morrow, That which is laid, beneath death's shadow, in penitence before Thy feet, is there in ashes, when death has winged away, to mock Thy mercy. Time swings on. Vows made in penitence--they are no more than to the drunkard his drink: delusion,