And then suddenly there seemed no humor at all--only black, infamous
shame and condemnation--and he straightened up from where he leaned
against the bedpost, his face set and strained.

"Thornton had asked Helena to marry him because he _loved_ her"--the
words came slowly, haltingly, aloud--and then he covered his face with
his hands. But he, he who loved her too--what had _he_ done!




--XXII--

THE SHRINE


For a little time Madison stood there in his room, motionless, staring
unseeingly before him--and then, as one awakening from a dream that had
brought dismay and a torment too realistic to be thrown from him on the
instant, his brain still a little blunted, he took up his hat
mechanically, went out from the room, descended by the back stairs to
the rear door of the hotel, and took the road to the Patriarch's
cottage.

And as he walked in the freshness of the night, the restless turmoil of
his soul that since early afternoon had brought him near to the verge of
madness itself, that had robbed him of sane virility, that a moment
since in his room had suddenly begun to lift from him even as the leaden
clouds in the vault above him now were scattering, breaking, and through