“Yes—Maud, my sister, that is my own blood, is it not? Maud laughed, oh, she laughed! She came and sat by the side of my bed, the wound that Lochore’s bullet had made was yet green in my lung—for the memory of our old friendship he could not even do me the mercy to shoot straight—and she, my own sister ... my blood! She was to marry the man whose hand was red and whose soul was black, the man who had openly flaunted about Town, as the latest Corinthian, the girl that was to have been his friend’s bride, and boasted that he had done me what he called the best service one man could do another. ‘Why, fool, you owe him eternal gratitude,’ said Maud. It was a huge joke!” Terrified, Ellinor stood looking at him. If her pride had allowed her to reason with him earlier, perhaps it might have availed. Now she felt that any words of hers would be worse than useless. As well try to reason away ague or delirium. “My friend, my love, my kin, you see!” he cried. “History repeats itself. You, you,” he came close to her with a frenzied gesture as if to overwhelm her with reproach, “you, my kin, you who came into my solitude as my friend, you whom some blind madness has kept whispering to me was to be my love, you would combine in your single person the three traitors that stabbed my youth!” She never knew if she had screamed, or if it was only the cry of her heart that suddenly rang in her ears. But she seized and clung to his descending hand as it would have waved her from him for ever. “Ah, no, David, no!” she repeated, the denegation in a voice as frenzied as his own. And suddenly her ice of pride melted and the tears came streaming from her eyes. At the sight the man seemed to come back in some way to his senses. The cold hand she held became more human warm. “Tears?” he said in an altered voice. “Have I caused you tears? Ah, don’t cry, Ellinor! I must not blame you; it is only that the world is not made for me, nor I for the world. Forgive me and forget. You are what you are. I am what I am.” He drew his hand from hers, turned his glance away. “To-night, as you sat, so resplendent, so pleased with the flattery and the admiration of these ... these creatures; so decked out, so different, the scales fell away from my eyes. I saw the new course of self-deception I had entered upon; and it was very bitter. I have had no sleep this month. The past has been brought back upon me. I knew that it would be so—and dreaded it. Forgive me, Ellinor!” He took her hand and led her, as he spoke, back into the observatory and towards the stairs. She felt she was being dismissed from her high place in his life. When they reached the tower stair he said again: “Forgive me, forget.” And as he spoke he dropped her hand. And she ran from him into the shelter of the darkness. She wept through the night. But, heavy as was the darkness about her soul, in it shone one star at least. Jealous! He was jealous ... and without love there is no jealousy.