“Ah, you are malignant,” she cried, with a flash of spirit, his cold, sinister eye sinking and piercing deep into her heart like cold steel. “You are not he whom I have sought. He was frank, generous, kind. A strange, bitter, monstrous creature has grown in his guise.” Her voice trembled and broke as she moved to the hatchway. “May God help you,” she said, in a kind of sobbing whisper, “who have so little kindness and pity for others.” And in a moment she had faded, a slender, shrinking shade of sorrow, from his vision. When she was gone he fell upon the bulwarks and buried his face in his hands. “Ah, _bon Dieu_!” he murmured; “how could I do it! She who has been so kind--so kind.” The new delight that swept over him at the thought of all that this rare, sweet woman had done for him came over him in a delicious flush, which drove away the pallor of his distemper like the warm glow of the tropics upon the frozen north. The heavy burden of his melancholy was lifted. If he crept about with bowed head now, it was because of some failing of the spirit or some craven dishonor of his own. He and his were forever raised to high estate, and no careless proscription of his inconsequent Mistress Fate could cast him down again. The freedom of his soul from the blight which his birth had put upon it lent it wings to soar gladly into the wide empyrean of his imagination. And he gave himself up without stint to the new joy in their motion. Did he wish, he could go at once to London and take a place among the men of his kind, a place which no mere art could win for him.