"I used to think I knew you," she said, faltering, "but I don't. Why don't you despise hypocrisy and double-dealing as you used to?" "I do; more heartily than ever." "Yet, in spite of that, you have--oh, it is perfectly unspeakable!" "I am taking your word for it," he rejoined gloomily. "You are denying me what the most wretched criminal is taught to believe is his right--to know what he is accused of." "Have you forgotten that night last winter when you--when I saw you at the gate with Nancy Bryerson?" "I'm not likely to forget it." She seized her courage and held it fast, putting maidenly shame to the wall. "Tom, it is a terrible thing to say--and your punishment will be terrible. _But you must marry Nancy!_" "And father another man's child?--not much!" he answered brutally. "And father your own children--two of them," she said, with bitter emphasis. "Oh, that's it, is it?" he said, with a deeper scowl. "So there are two of them, are there? That's why no woman in Mr. Farley's country colony is at home to me any more, I suppose." And then, still more bitterly: "Of course, you are all sure of this?--Nan has at last confessed that I am the guilty man?" "You know she has not, Tom. Her loyalty is still as strong and true at it is mistaken. But your duty remains." He was standing on the brink of the cliff, looking down on Paradise Valley, spread like a silver-etched map far below in the moonlight. The flare and sough of the furnace at the iron-works came and went with regular intermittency; and just beyond the group of Chiawassee stacks a tiny orange spot appeared and disappeared like a will-o'-the-wisp. He was staring down at the curious spot when he said: "If I say that I have no duty toward Nan, you will believe it is a lie--as you did once before. Have you ever reflected that it is possible to trample on love until it dies--even such love as I bear you?" "It is a shame for you to speak of such things to me, Tom. Consider what I have endured--what you have made me endure. People said I was standing by you, condoning a sin that no right-minded young woman should condone. I bore it because I thought, I believed, you were sorry. And at that very time you were deceiving me--deceiving every one. You have dragged me in the very dust of shame!" "There is no shame save what we make for ourselves," he retorted. "One day, according to your creed, we shall stand naked before your God, and before each other. In that day you will know what you have done to me to-night. No, don't speak, please; let me finish. The last time we were together you gave me a strong word, and--and you kissed me. For the sake of that word and that kiss I went out into the world a different man. For the little fragment of your love that you gave me then, I have lived a different man from that day to this. Now you shall see what I shall be without it."