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110 She remained silent. But her silence only stirred him afresh.

"It is a bad beginning," he said. "I know it is because I have tried it. I have said to myself that I was different from other men, too."

He ended with an impatient movement and a sound half like a groan.

"Here I am," he cried, "telling myself it is better to battle against the strongest feeling of my life because I am 'different'—because there is a kind of taint in my blood. I don't begin as other men do by hoping. I begin by despairing, and yet I can't give up. How it will end, God knows!"

"I understand you better than you think," she said.

Something in her voice startled him.

"What!" he exclaimed. "Has my mother——"

He stopped and gazed at her, wondering. Some powerful emotion he could not comprehend expressed itself in her face.

"She does not speak of it often," she said. "She thinks of it always."

"Yes," he answered. "I know that. She is afraid. She is haunted by her dread of it—and," his voice dropping, "so am I."

He felt it almost unnatural that he should speak so freely. He had found it rather difficult to accustom himself to her presence in the house, sometimes he had even been repelled by it, and yet, just at this moment, he felt somehow as if they stood upon the same platform and were near each other.

"It will break loose some day," he cried. "And the day is not far off. I shall run the risk and either win or lose. I fight hard for every day of dull quiet I gain.