Part 54 (2/2)

Suddenly, in the disorder and tumult of his tortured brain, came, quite foolishly and inconsequently, a quotation from an old French romance--full of satire and the keen cynicism of a period--which he had been reading:

”_'Tres volontiers,' repart.i.t le demon.

'Vous aimez les tableaux changeans; Je veux vous contenter.'_”

Yes! the devil who was torturing him now had shown him many moving aspects of life. _Les tableaux changeans!_

But now, at last, here was the worst moment of all.

”_For the dear Christ's sake, tell me, Robert!_”

How could he tell _this_?

This was his last moment of peace, his last chance of any help or hope.

He had begun to cling to her, to mingle foolish tears with hers--the while his fired brain ranged all the halls of agony.

For if he told her--this gentle Christian lady, to whom he had been so unkind--then she would never touch him more.

The last hours--there was but little time remaining--would be alone.

ALONE!

This new revelation that her love was still his, wonder of mysteries!

this came at the last moments to aid him.

A last grace before the running waters closed over him. Was he to give this up?

The thought of flight lay like a wounded bird in his brain. It crept about it like some paralysed thing. Not yet dead, but inactive. Though he knew how terribly the moments called to him, yet he could not act.

The myriad agonies he was enduring now, agonies so various and great that he knew h.e.l.l had none greater, these, even these were alleviated by the wonder of his wife's love.

The terrible remorse that was knocking at his heart could not undo that.

He clung to her.

”Tell me all about it, Robert. I will forgive you, whatever you have done. I have long ago forgiven everything in my heart. There are only the words to say.”

She rested her worn, tired head on his shoulder. The sunbeams gave it a glory.

Again the man must suffer a terrible agony. She had asked him to tell her all his trouble in a voice full of gentle pleading.

_Whose voice did her voice recall to him; what fatal hour?_ A coa.r.s.er voice, a richer voice, trembling, so he had thought, with love for him.

”_Tell me everything, Bob!_” It was Gertrude's voice.

The day of his undoing! The day when his horrid secret was wrested from him by the levers of his own pa.s.sions. The day which had brought him to this. _Finis coronat opus!_

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