"You are right there also. There is a kind of wrongdoing that cannot be atoned for. I see that now. But if you knew how I have suffered for it and still suffer.... "Suffer? Why shouldn't you suffer? Isn't that poor girl suffering? Hasn't she suffered all along? And whatever you do for her now, won't she go on suffering to the last day and hour of her life?" He dropped his head still lower under the lash of Fenella's scorn. "That is not all either," she said in a broken voice, sitting on the sofa again and brushing her handkerchief over her eyes. "Perhaps that girl is not the only one who is suffering. I wanted to think so well of you, to be so proud of you. You were to be the defender of women, fighting their battle for them when they were wronged and helpless. And when you became a Judge .... Oh, I cannot bear to think of it. You have disappointed and deceived me. You are not the man I took you to be." Outside the sun was setting. A dull ray from it was falling on his haggard face and brushing her bronze-brown hair. "I thought you loved me too. It was so sweet to think you loved me--me only--never having loved anybody else. Every woman has felt like that, hasn't she? I have anyway. Other men might be faithless, but not you, not Victor Stowell. And yet, for the sake of your poor fancy for this country girl...." "Fenella!" "Oh, what a fool I've been," she cried, leaping up again and dashing the tears from her eyes. "Forgive you? Never while that girl lies in prison as the consequence of your sin." Stowell could bear no more. Stepping forward, he laid hold of Fenella by the shoulders, and approaching his face to her face he said, "Listen to me, Fenella. I have done wrong--I know that. I am not here to excuse or defend myself, and if your heart does not plead for me I have nothing to say. But I swear before God that I have loved you with all my soul and strength, and if it hadn't been for that...." "Loved me!" cried Fenella, between a laugh and a sob. And then in the wild delirium of the sheer woman, she said, "What proof of your love have you given to me compared to the proof you have given to that girl? Oh, when I think of it I could almost find it in my heart to envy her. I do envy her. Yes, degraded and shamed and condemned and in prison as she is, I envy her, and could change places with her this very minute. I would have given you anything in the world rather than this should be--anything, my honour, myself...." "Fenella!" "Let me go! You are driving me mad. Leave me. I hate you. I despise you. You have broken my heart. I thought you were brave and true, but what are you but a common...." "Fenella!" "Coward! Hypocrite! Let me go!" But she had no need to wrench herself away from him. His hands fell from her shoulders like lead, and at the next moment she was gone from the room.