the end of the tale.

For a long time David stood looking into the sparkling night before him,
speechless and unmoving, his hands clasped behind him, his head bent
forward, as though in a dream.

How, all in an instant, had life changed for him! How had Soolsby's tale
of Eglington's death filled him with a pity deeper than he had ever felt-
the futile, bitter, unaccomplished life, the audacious, brilliant genius
quenched, a genius got from the same source as his own resistless energy
and imagination, from the same wild spring. Gone--all gone, with only
pity to cover him, unloved, unloving, unbemoaned, save by the Quaker girl
whose true spirit he had hurt, save by the wife whom he had cruelly
wronged and tortured; and pity was the thing that moved them both,
unfathomable and almost maternal, in that sense of motherhood which,
in spite of love or passion, is behind both, behind all, in every true
woman's life.

At last David spoke.

"Who knows of all this--of who I am, Soolsby?"

"Lady Eglington and myself, my lord."

"Only she and you?"

"Only us two, Egyptian."

"Then let it be so--for ever."