“I have borne children,” she broke out strangely, “and they died--one after another they died, because I willed they should. I could be stronger than him in some things. And he begged and prayed me; but I would not; I willed them dead, and they died--each as it came. They were the atonement for that life. It’s spirit seems to rise and beckon to me from the past. O, my God! and you ask me how you’ve earned my favour. Who was your mother, who were your parents?” Her voice rose wildly. She held out her arms to me with a passionate gesture. And now I understood. The poor driven creature was insane--struck mad, perhaps, in some sudden consciousness of the true nature of her bondage to a devil. I must humour, not abuse her. “You say you tell me all this for myself,” I said, standing quiet and unresponsive. “What, if for myself, I neither fear nor apprehend; can boast a will as strong, perhaps, as his; am resolved to go forward and expose him for the thing he is? I take the privilege of your confidence. I do not flatter.” She appeared to listen again intently. When she answered, there seemed a note as of some under-triumph thrilling through her voice: “You will go on? You will not be dissuaded?” “I will not--no.” She caught her hands together; her breath came quick; she took an eager step towards me, and spoke in broken sentences: “I thought--I hoped, even, it might be so. Listen, then, I’ll help you to your end. So like, my God! it seems a Providence. Dead! Yes, but how? he was going to tell me when Mark came in.” “Hush, madam! hush! Who was dead?” “My baby--my darling. He might have been like you now--your age--his father’s son. It was twenty years ago. I had a nurse--Ellen Trimmer was her name--she was killed in a street accident; but before she died she made a confession to the man she had been going to marry, and he came on with it to me. I had heard just so much, and then Mark spoke. He had been hidden behind the curtains of my bed all the time; and he spoke quite softly to the man, and the man declared that he had asserted nothing, and believed nothing, and had only been a fool for attaching any value to the ravings of a delirious girl. And he promised for all his life was worth to say and think no more about it, and Mark saw to it that he would keep his promise. What had he been going to say--what? I never had the heart or will to ask. But you--you can still find out if you like, and if he is still living.” Was she, herself, raving? Sometimes, as I listened to that disjointed outpouring, I was convinced of it; sometimes I seemed to gather from its incoherence the shadow of a truth, a purpose, the cry of a long-fettered despair struggling for articulation.