'Dear girl, accounting for it, is not the same as excusing.'

'Who can account for it! I was caught in a whirl--Oh! nothing
supernatural: my weakness; which it pleases me to call a madness--shift
the ninety-ninth! When I drove down that night to Mr. Tonans, I am
certain I had my clear wits, but I felt like a bolt. I saw things,
but at too swift a rate for the conscience of them. Ah! let never
Necessity draw the bow of our weakness: it is the soul that is winged to
its perdition. I remember I was writing a story, named THE MAN OF TWO
MINDS. I shall sign it, By the Woman of Two Natures. If ever it is
finished. Capacity for thinking should precede the act of writing. It
should; I do not say that it does. Capacity for assimilating the public
taste and reproducing it, is the commonest. The stuff is perishable, but
it pays us for our labour, and in so doing saves us from becoming
tricksters. Now I can see that Mr. Redworth had it in that big head of
his--the authoress outliving her income!'

'He dared not speak.'

'Why did he not dare?'

'Would it have checked you?'

'I was a shot out of a gun, and I am glad he did not stand in my way.
What power charged the gun, is another question. Dada used to say, that
it is the devil's masterstroke to get us to accuse him. "So fare ye
well, old Nickie Ben." My dear, I am a black sheep; a creature with a
spotted reputation; I must wash and wash; and not with water--with
sulphur-flames.' She sighed. 'I am down there where they burn. You