"Congratulate me? My God, _you_ congratulate _me_. Are you blind? Have you been blind all this time? She not only spurned my love, but in a blaze of righteous indignation she told me she loved you. She said she loved, adored, reverenced--_worshiped_ you. She seemed to look on my hopes as some sort of insult to her womanhood. She didn't want _you_ to know of her love, she said, but she wanted _me_ to know it. She seems to feel--she seems to think that in all your kindness to her and nobleness you deserve a wife who has never fancied another, even in girlhood. She told me that her feeling for me was only the idle whim of a child, and that she pitied me as a weak and stumbling creature. She put it that way, with blazing eyes, and she put it right. I _am_ weak--I've always been weak; and to-day, in trying to win her from you, I did the weakest act of my life. I confess it. You have the right to strike me in the face. I knew you loved her. I knew she had become your very life, and yet in my despair and damnable vanity I wanted to take her from you. I am trying to get right, but I fell before that dazzling temptation. In telling you of her love now I am tearing my soul from my body, but I want to atone--I want to atone--as far as possible." Saunders turned his transformed face away. He said nothing, and the two stood in dead silence for a moment. Suddenly Saunders put out a throbbing hand and laid it on Mostyn's shoulder. "I thank you; I thank you," he said, huskily. "You must excuse me this evening. I hope you can pass the time some way. I am going to her, Mostyn. I can't wait another minute. I must see her to-night!" CHAPTER XXIII CONCLUSION Six years passed. It was autumn in the mountains. The air was balmy and crisp. The landscape was gloriously tinted by late wild flowers and the colors of dying leaves. A far-off peak, catching the rays of the afternoon sun, rose above the dun valley like a mound of delicate coral dropped from the cloud-mottled blue overhead. A stranger, walking from the station at Ridgeville, was nearing the front gate of Saunders's home. He moved with a slow, thoughtful step. He was gray, even to the whiteness of snow. His skin was clear and pink, his eyes were bright and alert. As he opened the gate he became aware of the nearness of two children playing in a vine-clad summer-house on the right of the graveled walk. The older was a handsome boy of four years; his companion was a pretty little girl of two, whom the boy held by the hand quite with the air of manly guardianship. "Now, see how you have soiled your dress," the boy said, brushing the child's lap with his little hand. "Mama wouldn't like that." The clicking of the gate-latch attracted the glance of the children; and they stood staring curiously at the man who, with an introductory smile, was drawing near. He bent down and shook hands with them both, first with the little girl and lastly with the boy.