"Then how will you endure to see her once more the wife of your enemy
and rival?"

"Mantel," said David, pausing in his restless walk across the room, "I
do not wonder that you ask this. It was the first question that I asked
myself. It struck my heart like the blow of a hammer. But I have settled
it. I have weighed the pains which I have suffered in a just and even
balance. I know I cannot escape suffering, whichever way I turn. I have
felt the pains of doing wrong, and I now deliberately choose the pains
of doing right, let them be what they will!"

"It is easy to scorn the bitterness of an untasted cup."

"No matter! I have settled it. It must be done."

Mantel shrugged his shoulders and said, "I am afraid that the great
Joker of whom we were talking yesterday is about to perpetrate another
of his jests."

"You think it absurd, then?"

"I regard it as impossible."

"But why?"

"Because you are making a plan to act as if you were a disembodied
conscience. You have forgotten that you still have the passions of a
man. I fear there will be another tragedy as dark as the first. But if
you are determined, I must obey you. I never know how to act for myself;
but if some one wishes me to act for him I can do so without fear, even