He met the beseeching with a steady gaze that might have been the outlooking of a spirit of calm superiority or the cold stare of a demon of ruthlessness. The mere suggestion of the alternative made her hot and cold by turns. "I wonder that you have the courage to appeal to me," he said, at length. "Are you not afraid?" "For Margaret's sake I am not afraid." "You are very brave--and very loyal. Do you wonder that I was once moved to tell you that I loved you?" "How can you speak of that here--and now!" she burst out. "Is there no measure of the hardness of your heart? Is it not enough that you should make me beg for that which I have a right to demand?" He went apart from her at that to walk softly up and down in the narrow space between the bed and the wall,--to walk for leaden-winged minutes that seemed hours to Constance, waiting for his answer. At the final turn he lifted the sheet from the face of the dead woman and looked long and earnestly, as one who would let death speak where life was dumb and inarticulate. Constance watched him with her heart in a turmoil of doubt and fear. The doubt was of her own making, as the fear was of his. She had thought that this man was known to her, in his potentialities for good or evil, in his stumblings upon the brink of the abyss, and in his later plunge into the depths of wrongdoing; but now that she was brought face to face with him, her prefigurings took new shapes and she feared to look upon them. For the potentialities had suddenly become superhuman, and love itself stood aghast at the possibilities. In the midst of it he stood before her again. "What is it that you would have me do?" he asked. The tone of it assured her that her battle was fought and won; but at the moment of victory she had not the strength to make terms with him. "You know what you ought to do," she said, with eyes downcast. "The 'oughts' are sometimes terribly hard, Miss Elliott. Haven't you found them so?" "Sometimes." She was finding one of them sufficiently hard at that moment to compel the admission. "But they are never impossible, you would say, and that is true also. You asked me a few moments ago if there was nothing that would move me, and I was tempted. But that is past. Will you suffer me to go now?" She stood aside, but her hand was still on the latch of the door. "You have not promised," she said. "Pardon me; I was hoping you would spare me. The cup is of my own mixing, but the lees are bitter. Must I drain them?" "I--I don't understand," she rejoined. "Don't you? Consider it a moment. You have taken it for granted that I had it in my heart to do this thing, and, knowing what you do of me, the inference is just. But I have not admitted it, and I had hoped you would spare me the admission which a promise would imply. Won't you leave me this poor shadow of refutation?" She opened the door for him.