'Do you think,' he asked, 'that to see you here, and know that you understand me at last, would not make up for much harder treatment than I ever had from you, Mabel? If that were all--but he has told you, you said, told you the whole sad story. Mabel--what are you going to do?' She put the question aside with a gesture of heart-sick pride: 'What does it matter about me? I can only think of you just now--let me forget all the rest while I may!' 'Dying men have their privileges,' he said, 'and I have not much more time. Mabel, I must ask you: What have you said to Mark?' 'Nothing,' she said, with a low moan, 'what was there to say? He must know that he has no wife now.' 'Mabel, you have not left him!' he cried. 'Not yet,' she said, turning away wearily; 'he brought me to this house--he is here now, I believe.... You are torturing me with these questions, Vincent.' 'Answer me this once,' he persisted, 'do you mean to leave him?' She rose to her feet. 'What else can I do,' she demanded, 'now that I know? The Mark I loved has gone for ever--he never even existed! I have no husband beyond the name. I have been in a dream all this time, and I wake to find myself alone! Only an hour ago and Mark was all the world to me--think what he must be to me from this time! No, I cannot live with him. I could not breathe the same air with him. I am ashamed that I could ever have loved him. He is all unworthy, and mean, and false, and I thought him noble and generous!' 'You are too hard,' said Vincent, 'he is not all bad, he was weak--not wicked; if I had not felt that, I should never have tried to keep his secret, and forced him, against his will, to keep it himself. And now he has confessed it all to you, when there was no fear of discovery to urge him, only because he could not endure the thought of my bearing your displeasure to the end. He did not know that that was so till this afternoon, and I told him without thinking it would have that effect on him--I did him an injustice there. He must have gone back and accused himself at once. Think, Mabel, was there nothing unselfish and brave in that? He knew what you would think of him, he knew that he was safe if he kept silence--and yet he spoke, because he preferred the worst for himself to allowing me to bear the penalty for his sins. Is a man who could act thus utterly lost?' 'Lost to me!' she said passionately, 'the confession came too late; and how could any confession atone for such a sin! No, he is too unworthy, I can never trust him, never forgive him!'