Again the man must suffer a terrible agony. She had asked him to tell her all his trouble in a voice full of gentle pleading. _Whose voice did her voice recall to him; what fatal hour?_ A coarser voice, a richer voice, trembling, so he had thought, with love for him. "_Tell me everything, Bob!_" It was Gertrude's voice. The day of his undoing! The day when his horrid secret was wrested from him by the levers of his own passions. The day which had brought him to this. _Finis coronat opus!_ But the agony within him was the agony of _contrast_. The great fires round his soul had burnt his lust away. There was no more regret or longing for the evil past. All the joys of a sensual life seemed as if they had never been. Now, the pain was the pain of a man, not who knows the worst too soon, but who knows the best too late! A vivid picture, a succession of thoughts following each other with such kinetic swiftness that they became welded in one single picture, as one may see a vast landscape of wood and torrent, champaign and forest, in one flash of the storm sword, came to him now. And, at the last, he saw himself seated at a great table in a noble room. There were soft lights. Silver and flowers were there. Round the board sat many men and women. On their faces was the calm triumph of those who had succeeded in a fine battle, won an intellectual strife. The faces were calm, powerful, serene. They were the salt of society. He saw his own face in a little mirror set among the flowers. His face was even as their faces. Self-reverence had dignified it, self-knowledge and self-control had turned the lines to kindly marble, defiant of time. At the other end of the table sat a calm and gracious lady, richly dressed in some glowing sombre stuff. She was the grave and loving matron who slept by his side. Full of honour, full of the glorious satisfaction of a great work well done, a life lived well; hand in hand, a noble and notable pair, they were making their fine progress together. "I am waiting, Robert, dear!" Then he knew that he must speak. In rapid words, which seemed to come from a vast distance, he confessed it all. He told her how Schuabe had tempted him with a vast fortune, how he was already in his power when the temptation had come. How his evil desires had so gripped him, his life of sin had become like air itself to him. He told of the secret visit to Palestine and the forgery which had stirred the world. As he spoke, he felt, in some subtle way, that the life and warmth were dying out of the arms which were round him. The electric current of devotion which had been flowing from this lady seemed to flicker and die away. The awful story was ended at last. Then with a face in which the horror came out in waves, inexpressibly terrible to see, with each beat of the pulses a wave of unutterable horror, she slowly rose. Her arms fell heavily to her sides, all her motions became automatic, jerky. Slowly, slowly, she turned.