"No, I wish it to remain as it is. Besides--" He broke off hurriedly, as though seeking to avoid an unpleasant train of thought. "Beatrice, the world won't understand that will. Lois won't, and I pray, for the sake of her happiness, that she may never have to--but if the time comes when this must be put into action, I want you to give her a message from me. Will you?" "Of course I will. But"--she faced him with a sudden inspired appeal--"must you wait until you are dead to speak to her? Would it not be better to go to her now with your message? I do not know what has come between you both, but I know this much--all forms of pretense are fatal--" He stopped her with a gesture of decision. "No," he said. "The secret must remain secret. It has overshadowed my life. It has laden me with a burden of responsibility and shame which I have determined to share with no one. I have taken it upon my shoulders, and I shall carry it to the end. Tell Lois that I have never once swerved in my love for her. Ask her to trust me and think kindly of me. It is not I who have sinned against her--" "Sinned against her! Who has sinned against her? Do you mean me?" "No, not you. You also have been sinned against. I also." He sighed wearily. "When I look about me, it seems as though not one of us has not in turn sinned and been sinned against. It is an endless chain of the wrong we do one another." She laughed, and for the first time there rang in her voice a note of the old harshness. "Look at me, John. There is no turn and turn about with me. From the beginning I have tricked and lied and fought my way through life. I didn't care whom I hurt so long as I got through. I sinned. Who has sinned against me?" "One person at least," he answered significantly. She caught her breath, and the hand that passed hastily across her forehead trembled. "Even if it were true what you say," she said, half inaudibly, "it does not alter the fact that we must atone for what has been done." "It is the justice of the world," he assented. "We must make good the harm we do and the harm that has been done us." He threw back his shoulders with a movement of energetic protest. "Do not let us waste time talking. We can not help each other. All I ask is--do not forget my message." She looked at him, strangely moved. "You talk as though you were going to die to-night," she said. "I talk as a man does whom death has already tapped on the shoulder more than once of late," he answered, with grim humor. "Good-by, Beatrice." "Good-by." He pushed his writing-table to one side so that she could pass out on to the verandah. "Do not come with me farther," she said. "The carriage is waiting outside. I would rather go alone."