"Oh! Dr. Duncan!" she cried, with a voice full of such tragedy that the strong man felt his veins tingle with terror. "Oh! go away! go away, and leave me.... You do not know what you are saying.... You are mad. Never speak to me again. Forget me, if you do not wish to be more miserable than ever man was before. You don't know what I am--what I must be. If you married me, you would go mad with what you discovered. You would blow your brains out, and mine too.... I am not exaggerating. I am talking sober truth. I mean this.... Yes, more.... Think of all the greatest criminals you have ever heard of. Think of the most hideous, unspeakable crimes ever invented by man, and then look on me as guilty of them all--yes, all of them, and worse. I warn you--remember, I have warned you." The intense earnestness of her look--of her speech--terrified him. "What could she mean? Was she mad?" And he felt sick and dizzy with the pain of this thought. "Now, Dr. Duncan, not another word. I won't bring you any further out of your way. Good-night." And she walked rapidly away. He stood where he was, supporting himself by the railing--for a moment half-dazed at the shock he had received. Then there came a curious reaction to him after the first effects of her wild words. He was seized by a sort of frenzy--by the strongest of all the passions in its very greatest strength: love--love that is insane, and thinks of nothing--reckless of crime and consequence--the strong man's love that can make of him a fiend or an angel. His blood tingled through his veins like fire. "Mary," he thought to himself, "Mary, you must be mine. Even if you _are_ mad, I will still have you. I do not care what you are. I would be mad too, rather than lose you. Were you a thousand times worse than you say--if you _have_ committed every crime--it can make no difference now to me. If you were a devil, I should have to become devil too, to please you. It must be love between us--love for good or bad. If it cannot be of heaven, it must be of hell; but love it must--shall be...." And the usually self-possessed man hurried through the streets with his brain on fire, his hands clenched, and his eyes glaring, so that people he passed got to one side or other of him in fear to let him go by, for his face was as that of a madman. The devil had got hold of him for the time; and after the fit was over, he shuddered when he remembered how wild and wicked his fancies had been--how, in a moment, it had seemed as if all the good of years of careful training had run out of him, and left him a fiend without conscience or fear, capable of any deed, if by it he could but compass his desires. And so it is with all of us at times. The passionate temptations of a man reveal to him, in flashes, what horrible depths of possible sin lurk in his nature--hidden unsuspected, awaiting their opportunity.