Page:Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/345

 "Strange, is it not," said the young advocate, speaking aloud his thought involuntarily, "that I should not be acquainted with your history when I made my appeal?"

"Would it have been made had you known all?"

"Indeed, yes," said Northcote, with a fervor in which he tried to rejoice; "your baseness is now less in my sight than it then was."

The fierceness of the woman's breathing arrested her speech.

"You force me to believe," she cried in choking accents, "you show me what faith is, you unfold the meaning of affirmation. Never again can I be nourished by denial. You are, indeed, the Cloud-dweller who in my vision I saw break forth out of the stars."

The sword with which these words pierced the advocate was too sharp for his fortitude. His wounds of that day had left him faint and spent with the blood that had flowed from his veins. He grew frail and numb.

"You had better hear the truth," he said, gasping. "It is the death-knell of us both, but there is a limit to mortal endurance. I would have you divorce the instrument from his works. Your Cloud-dweller is not a god, but even as yourself a thing of dross and clay."

"I deny it, I deny it," said the woman, in a voice of passion.

The man seemed to cower before the anguish of her eyes.

"You owe your deliverance to an unworthy instinct which rendered me invulnerable."

"Unworthy, my deliverer!"