"Ah, no, you said that, Rosalie," he interposed gently.

"You said I was as magnanimous as God. You were laughing at me then,
mocking me, whose only fault is that I loved and trusted you. In the
wickedness of your heart you robbed me of happiness, you--"

"Don't--don't! Rosalie! Rosalie!" he exclaimed in shrinking protest.

That she had spoken to him as her deepest heart abhorred only increased
her agitated denunciation. "Yes, yes, in your mad selfishness, you did
not care for the poor girl who forgot all, lost all, and now--" She
stopped short at the sight of his white, awe stricken face. His eye-
glass seemed like a frost of death over an eye that looked upon some
shocking scene of woe. Yet he appeared not to see, for his fingers
fumbled on his waistcoat for the monocle--fumbled--vaguely, helplessly.
It was the realisation of a soul cast into the outer darkness. Her
abrupt silence came upon him like the last engulfing wave to a drowning
man--the final assurance of the end, in which there is quiet and the
deadly smother.

"Now--I know-the truth!" he said, in a curious even tone, different from
any she had ever heard from him. It was the old Charley Steele who
spoke, the Charley Steele in whom the intellect was supreme once more.
The judicial spirit, the inveterate intelligence which put justice before
all, was alive in him, almost rejoicing in its regained governance. The
new Charley was as dead as the old had been of late, and this clarifying
moment left the grim impression behind that the old law was not obsolete.
He felt that in the abandonment of her indignation she had mercilessly
told the truth; and the irreducible quality of mind in him which in the
old days made for justice, approved. There was a new element now,