'Why not? Because you and I have known love? That is the reasoning of a fool—or a woman.'

Have known love, she thought with anguish. Docs he mean that? Is it all past? Has he come here simply to injure us? Somehow I must check this new danger: danger from the one person I trusted to help.

'You're a Governor now, a great man. I should not be surprised that you no longer feel—feel affection for the daughter of an impoverished prisoner. I was doubtless more attractive as the daughter of a Vice-President?'

'Rubbish!' he exploded. 'Don't play the hypocrite with me, Theodosia.'

She was silent. Her thoughts ran together in panic. What was this new evidence? He came from Jefferson, he had been out West. Whatever he said would be listened to avidly. The prosecution had so far been able to produce few witnesses more important than the grooms and gardeners they had heard today. This would be different. If he no longer loved her, she had no weapon. She was helpless and shamed before his cold implacability. Suddenly she looked full at him, and their eyes met. Her heart leaped with relief. She gave an inarticulate cry. 'You do still love me, Merne! You can't lie to me now! I see it! I know it! Listen——'

She ran to the comer of the room, seating herself at the pianoforte. Her fingers stumbled a little and then grew sure; her voice throbbed with her desperate desire to reach him, to conjure the old emotions from the past by the sure magic of their music.

Water, parted from the sea——

He listened, at first resentful. She meant to soften him with this cheap trick. It was unworthy of her—childish. Women—always hankering for the past, refusing to let it die decently. Then gradually, as he listened, his resentment fell away. A peculiar thrill ran through him, as though his spirit trembled on the verge of discovery. It seemed that his consciousness expanded far beyond the limits of the shadowy room in Richmond. He feared to move or breathe, for behind the thinning mists revelation dwelt. 'Almost I can see, in another second I shall understand the whole——'

Once in the Mandan country, two years back, he had stood alone at sunrise upon the summit of one of the gigantic rocky mountains which reared their mighty bulk out there across the continent, and this same feeling had come to him then. The expedition's trials and dangers had diminished to nothingness. The mountain winds had brought him peace, a momentary glimpse of the eternal cosmic verity—as her small unconscious voice did now.

Let my heart find rest in thine——