"Oh!" she cried in the wondering self-abandonment of pain, "can you be a man, only a man, and strike so deep?" Then the very anguish of her soul gave her a sudden inspiration. She looked round her with her eyes dilating. "When you can do this," she said, putting with unconscious eloquence her hand to her heart, "what do you want with things like those?" The sight of the lamp which burned before Walter's portrait had given her a painful sense of harm and danger when she saw it first. It filled her now with a keen disdain. To be able to pierce the very soul, and yet to use the aid of _that_! She did not know what its meaning was, yet suffering in every nerve, she scorned it, and turned to him with a questioning look which was full of indignation and contempt. And he who was so strong, so much above her in power and knowledge, shrank--almost imperceptibly, but yet he shrank--startled, from her look and question. "_That?_" he said, "you who know so little of your own mind, how can you tell how human nature is affected?--by what poor methods, as well as by great. You understand nothing--not yourself--far less the devices of the wise." "Oh, you are wise," cried Oona, "and cruel. You can make what is best look the worst. You can confuse our souls so that we cannot tell what is good in us, and what evil. I know, I know, you are a great person. Yet you hide and lurk in this place which no man knows; and work by spells and charms like--like--" "Like what?" a gleam of anger and shame--or of something that might have betrayed these sentiments on any other face--crossed his usually calm and lofty countenance. Oona, opposite to him, returned his look with a passionate face of indignation and disdain. She had forgotten herself altogether, and everything but the thrill and throbbing of the anguish which seemed to have taken the place of her heart in her. She feared nothing now. The blow which she had received had given her the nobleness of desperation. "Like a poor--witch," she said; "like the wizard they call you; like one who plays upon the ignorant, not like the powerful spirit you are. You that can beat us down to the dust, both him and me. You that can turn sweet into bitter, and good into evil. Oh, how can you for shame take that way too, like a--juggler," she cried in her passion; "like a sorcerer; like----" "You speak like a fool, though you are no fool," he said, "not knowing the stuff that we are made of." He made a step towards her as he spoke, and though his tone was rather sad than fierce, there came upon Oona in a moment such a convulsion of terror as proved what the weakness was of which he spoke. She clung with all her failing force to the door which seemed her only support, and broke out into a shrill cry, "Walter, Walter, save me!" afraid of she knew not what, panic seizing her, and the light flickering in her fainting eyes. CHAPTER XIV.