exhausted, his courage broken. One night he said to Lily: "Do you know all I have been doing since we came back here?" "Yes, Maurice, I know." "And that it has all been in vain," he said, with a passion of bitterness that he could not try to conceal. "That too I understand, Maurice--I knew it would be in vain." He looked at her almost as at an enemy, for his heart was so full of misery, his mind was so worn with weariness, that he began to lose the true appreciation of human relations, and to confuse the beauty near him with the ugliness that companioned him so closely. "You knew it? What do you mean?" he said. "How could you know it?" "I felt it, Maurice; do not try any longer to work out alone your own redemption." "You can say that to me?" "Yes, for I believe that it is useless--you will fail." He set his lips together and said nothing. But a frown distorted his face slowly. "Leave your redemption to God. Oh, Maurice, leave it," Lily said, and there were tears in her eyes. "If this cry of the dead child is his punishment to you it must--it will--endure so long as he pleases. Your efforts cannot still it now. You yourself told me so once." "I told you?" "Yes--for the dead are beyond our hands and our lips. We cannot clasp them. We cannot kiss them. We cannot speak to them." "But they can speak to us and mock us. You are right. I can't still the cry--I can't! Then it's all over with me!" Suddenly, with a sob, Maurice flung himself down. He felt as if something within him snapped, and as if straightway a dissolution of all the man in him succeeded this rupture of the spirit. Careless of the pride of man, before the world and even in his own home, he gave himself up to a despair that was too weak to be frantic, too complete to be angry; a despair that no longer strove but yielded, that lay down in the dust and wept. Then, presently, raising his head and seeing Lily, in whose eyes were tears of pity, Maurice was seized with an enmity against her, unreasonably wicked, but suddenly so vehement that he did not try to resist it. "You have broken me," he said. "You have told me that there is no redemption, that I am in the hands of God, who persecutes me. You have told me the truth and made me hate you." "Maurice!" The cry came from her lips faintly, but there was the ring of anguish in it. "It is so," he repeated doggedly. "And, indeed, I believe that you have added to the weight of my burden. Since we have been married the persecution has increased. Once, when I was alone, I could bear it. Now you are here I cannot bear it. The child hates you. When you are near--in the night--its cry is so intense that I wonder you can sleep. Yet I hear your quiet breathing. You say you love me. Then why are you so calm? Why do you tell me to trust? Why do you hint that I may yet find peace, and then tell me to cease from working for my own peace? You don't love me, you laugh at my trouble. You despise me."