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 known sorrow, too, and so has my wife. I suppose you love her—"

"Man alive!" cried Hepworth. "Do you want to drive me mad altogether? Don't you see that it's almost killing me, this awful thing? Love her? My God, man, what do you know about love? You're young, you're a boy—look at me, I'm middle-aged, old, if you like, and I never loved in my life until I saw her. And now we're to be parted."

"Think of what it must have been when we were parted," said Verrell, quietly.

Hepworth nodded his head. He remembered the agony which Elisabeth had shown when she told him her story.

"I can't think," he answered. "I know what it must have been, but I can't think. The blow has broken me, man, I feel as if I were dead—dead as a door-nail and yet more alive than ever I was. That's what it must be to be in hell. I am in hell, Verrell—yes, in hell."

He drove on in silence. Instead of taking