The real thing--was the woman. This thought stung him like a reproach of cowardice. He had forgotten her! And she was but the instrument in the deed, for he had taught her that this care of a worthless life was sentimental, hysterical. He had urged her to put it away in some easy fashion, to hide it at least, in some sort of an asylum. That she had steadfastly refused to do. Better death outright, she had said. And that which he had feared to undertake, she had done, fearlessly. He had recoiled; it made him tremble to think of her in that act. What cowardice! These were the consequences of his teaching, of his belief. What had made her take this resolution so suddenly? There was time, all the time in the world, and having once neglected the thing at the very start, it was curious that she should now, at this late date, make her desperate resolve. Preston had not been worse, more difficult to handle. In fact, when the two women had grown used to his case, the management had been simple enough. He had thought she was inured to the disgust and the horror--placid almost, and taking the thing like one accustomed to pain. What was the cause of her revolt from her burden? Those filthy words the night they had come back late, when the fellow had stolen downstairs and spied upon them at their coffee. Had the shame of it before him stung her past enduring? Had it eaten into her mind and inflamed her? But his feverish imagination was not content with this illumination of the facts. Something more lay behind it all. He sat down beside a prostrate column to penetrate the gloom. As he gazed before him into the dark heavens, the blast furnace winked like an evil eye, then silently belched flame and smoke, then relapsed into its seething self. The monster's breath illumined the dusky sky for a few moments. Blackness then fell over all for two minutes, and again the beast reappeared. Far away to the west came through the night a faint roar, like the raving of men. There was a line of light against the horizon: the mob was burning freight cars. Soon the bonfire died down. The cries sounded more and more faintly, and more distinctly came the sharp reports of revolvers or military rifles. The law had taken a hand in the game. It was a night like this when the first glow of joy had suffused his life; and then had come that night, that wonderful night, which began, in the lurid fire, and ended foully with Preston's words. Here was the key: she too loved, as he had, and this feeling which had drawn them together from the very moment when he had looked from the helpless form on the hospital chair to her had grown, surging up in her heart as in his--until, until she had taken this last stern step, and had--