“True! And haven’t you fought for my happiness, and my life, too? I would have died long ago. As for happiness--it has come out of my fight, my work, my effort to meet you on your heights--more happiness than I deserve--than I ever hoped to attain.... But if you kill Virey--all will have been in vain.” “Why?” he asked. “Because it is I who ruined him,” she replied, in low, deep voice, significant of the force behind it. “As men go in the world he was a gentleman, a man of affairs, happy and carefree. When he met me his life changed. He worshiped me. It was not his fault that I could not love him. I hated him because they forced me to marry him. For years he idolized me.... Then--then came the shock--his despair, his agony. It made him mad. There is a very thin line between great love and great hate.” “What--what ruined him?” demanded Adam. “Adam, it will be harder to confess than any other ordeal of my whole life. Because--because _you_ are the one man I should have met years ago.... Do you understand? And I--who yearn for your respect--for your--Oh, spare me!... I who need your faith--your strange, incomprehensible faith in me--I, who hug to my hungry bosom the beautiful hopes you have in me--I must confess my shame to save my husband’s worthless life.” “No. I’ll not have you--you humiliating yourself to save him anything. I give my word. I’ll never kill Virey unless he harms you.” “Ah! But he has harmed me. He has struck me.... Wansfell! don’t leap like that. Listen. Virey will harm me, sooner or later. He is obsessed with his one idea--to see me suffer. That is why he has let you and me wander around together so much. He hoped in his narrow soul to see you come to love me, and me to love you--so through that I should fall _again_--to suffer more anguish--to offer more meat for his hellish revenge.... But, lo! I am uplifted--forever beyond his reach--never to be rent by his fiendish glee ... unless you kill him--which would stain my hands with his blood--bring back the doom of soul from which you rescued me!” “Magdalene, I swear I’ll never kill Virey unless he kills you,” declared Adam, as if forced beyond endurance. “Ah, I ask no more!” she whispered, in passionate gratitude. “My God! how I feared you--yet somehow gloried in your look!... And now listen, friend, brother--man who should have been my lover--I hurry to my abasement. I kill the she-thing in me and go on to my atonement. I fight the instincts of a woman. I sacrifice a possible paradise, for I am young and life is sweet.” She circled his head with her arm and drew it against her heaving breast. The throbs of that tortured heart beat, beat, beat all through Adam’s blood, to the core of his body.