"It went on so for five years," he slowly finished, "and it was from beginning to end deliberate, devilish revenge. I meant from the first to make him what he is to-day. I meant to make him hate his grandfather as he does--I meant to make him the hopeless drunkard that he is. It is all my work--every bit of it--as you see it now." He paused, but her eyes clung to the withered fern, and so quiet was her figure that it seemed as if she had not drawn breath since he began. Her faint smile was still sketched about the corners of her mouth, and her fingers were closed upon the brim of his harvest hat. "For five years I was like that," he went on again. "I did not know, I did not care--I wanted to be a beast. Then you came and it was different." For the first time she turned and looked at him. "And it was different?" she repeated beneath her breath. "Oh, there's nothing to say that will make things better; I know that. If you had not come I should never have known myself nor what I had been. It was like a thunderclap--the whole thing; it shook me off my feet before I saw what it meant--before I would acknowledge even to myself that--" "That?" she questioned in a whisper, for he had bitten back the words. "That I love you." As he spoke she slipped suddenly to her knees and lay with her face hidden on the old log, while her smothered sobs ran in long shudders through her body. A murmur reached him presently, and it seemed to him that she was praying softly in her clasped hands; but when in a new horror of himself he made a movement to rise and slip away, she looked up and gently touched him detainingly on the arm. "Oh, how unhappy--how unhappy you have been!" she said. "It is not that I mind," he answered. "If I could take all the misery of it I shouldn't care, but I have made you suffer, and for the sin that is mine alone." For a moment she was silent, breathing quickly between parted lips; then turning with an impulsive gesture, she laid her cheek upon the hand hanging at his side. "Not yours alone," she said softly, "for it has become mine, too." Before the wonder of her words he stared at her with dazed eyes, while their meaning shook him slowly to his senses. "Maria!" he called out sharply in the voice of one who speaks from a distance. She met his appeal with a swift outward movement of her arms, and, bending over, laid her hands gently upon his head. "Mine, too, Christopher--mine, too," she repeated, "for I take the blame of it, and I will share in the atonement. My dear, my dear, is love so slight a thing that it would share the joy and leave the sorrow--that it would take the good and reject the evil? Why, it is all mine! All! All! What you have been I was also; what I am to-day you will be. I have been yours since the first instant you looked upon me." With a sob he caught her hands and crushed them in his own. "Then this is love, Maria?" "It has been love--always." "From the first--as with me?"