A shudder shook him from head to foot. "How can I be glad to hear you say that," he asked, "when I know that it is your ruin and that I brought it on you? I have no right to tell you how I feel--how I've felt ever since I kissed you that night in the parlor and you lay so willingly in my arms and hung about my accursed neck. What can I do--what in the name of God, my tormentor? Shall I throw my sacred promise to the winds and laugh in the face of--of--?" "No!" she cried out. "No, for I'd be doing it. I'd be your evil temptress. Be yourself, Charlie--be what you were before I met you. I think I know--you are selling yourself for some one else as I was willing to do when my brothers were in danger. Don't let me tempt you--don't let anything tempt you. God brought me out of my darkness--by your aid He brought me out. He only knows what my awful struggle was when I was ready to go to that repulsive man as his wife with your image locked in my breast--with my desire for you wrapped around my soul. God helped me; surely He will help you. What are earthly troubles for if they are not to be conquered, trampled under foot, as we mount to the heights to which we are destined? _You shall not tell me anything._ I know your soul, and that is enough." She turned quickly and moved away. He saw the heads of her brothers as they wended their way toward Dodd's through the tall waving corn. How steadily, how erectly she walked toward the old mansion of her forebears! He noted the tiny marks of her shoes in the soil at his feet. He could have kissed them; he could have fallen on his knees before them in reverent, worshipful humility. Charles worked on till the cool, creeping shadows of the mountains told him that the sun was down. Then he shouldered his hoe and listlessly trudged homeward. He heard Kenneth and Martin singing as they returned through the corn. It was a negro plantation melody, somehow maddening now in its trustful suggestion of joy. He saw the boys come out into the path. They were arm in arm, full of happiness, full of the ebullient consciousness of their release. He smiled grimly. He told himself that their nightmare had passed, while his was an abiding reality. He must be the exception that proved the rule of life's cosmic harmony. Some things could be borne with a smile. A man might die for his friend, and jest as the black cap muffled his lips; a man might sing as he was being vivisected for a good cause; but this--this fate belonged to no imaginable category of tortures. He had won the heart of an angel and was forced to wear the garb of an outcast in the kingdom which was her rightful abode. CHAPTER XXXV