After it ceased they were still. It was plain that the woman was ashamed, disillusioned, conscious that she had been made a butt of; and that, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, she was still among the hopeless, the outcast, the condemned. She glanced furtively towards the companion of her shame; then more quickly still away from him, as if realising only too well that, in that quarter, there was no promise of hope rekindled. And she said, with choking utterance: "Tom, I never thought--you'd laugh at me. Did you bring--me home--for this?" She put up her hands, in their dreadful gloves, to her raddled, shrunken face, and stood, for a moment, still. Then her frame began to quiver, and she cried; and as she cried there came that laugh again. The note of mockery that was in it served to sting Ballingall into an assertion of such manhood as was in him. He clenched his fists, drew himself straighter, and, throwing back his head, faced towards where the laughter seemed to stand. "Tom," he said, "I've used you ill. We've both of us used you ill, both she and I--she's been as false a wife to you as I've been friend. Our sins have been many--black as ink, bitter as gall. We know it, both of us. We've had reason to know it well. But, Tom, consider what our punishment has been. Look at us--at her, at me. Think of what we were, and what we are. Remember what it means to have come to this from that. Every form of suffering I do believe we've known--of mind and of body too--she in her way, and I in mine. We've been sinking lower and lower and lower, through every form of degradation, privation, misery, until at last we're in the ditch--amidst the slime of the outer ditch. We've lost all that there is worth having, so far as life's concerned, for ever. The only hope that is left us is the hour in which it is appointed that we shall die. For my part, my hope is that for me that hour is not far off. And, as I'm a living man, I believe that for her it has already come; that the scythe is raised to reap; that she's dying where she stands. Have you no bowels of compassion, Tom--none? You used to have. Are they all dried and withered? There's forgiveness for sinners, Tom, with God; is there none with you? You used to be of those who forgive till seventy times seven; are you now so unforgiving? You may spurn me, you may trample on me, you may press my head down into the very slime of the ditch; you know that these many months you've torn and racked me with all the engines of the torture chambers: but she's your wife, Tom--she was your wife! you loved her once! She bore to you a little child--a little baby, Tom, a little baby! It's dead--with God, Tom, with God! She's going to it now--now, now! While she's passing into the very presence chamber, where her baby is, don't abase her, Tom. Don't, Tom, don't!"