Thorpe's face became troubled. "My sermons do not please," he answered, with touching simplicity. "They say there is not enough of h.e.l.l."

"I'm satisfied," commented the Doctor, in a grating voice. "I think there's plenty of h.e.l.l."

"You never come to church," remarked the minister, not seeing the point.

"There's h.e.l.l enough outside--for any reasonable mortal," returned Dexter. He was keyed to a high pitch. He felt that, at any instant, something might snap and leave him inert.

Thorpe sighed. His wrinkled old hand strayed out across the papers and turned the face of Ralph's mother toward him. He studied it closely, not having seen it before. Then he looked up at the Doctor, whose face was again like a mask.

"Your--?" A lift of the eyebrows finished the question.

Dexter nodded, with a.s.sumed carelessness. There was another long pause.

"Sometimes I envy you," said Thorpe, laying the picture down carefully, "you have had so much of life and joy. I think it is better for you to have had her and lost her than not to have had her at all," he continued, unconsciously paraphrasing. "Even in your loneliness, you have the comfort of memory, and your boy--I have wondered what a son might mean to me, now, in my old age. Dead though she is, you know she still loves you; that somewhere she is waiting to take your hand in hers."

"Don't!" cried Dexter. The strain was well-nigh insupportable.

"Forgive me, my friend," returned Thorpe, quickly. "I--" Then he paused. "As I was saying," he went on, after a little, "I have often envied you."

"Don't," said Dexter, again. "As you were also saying, distance hides the peak and you do not see the scars."

Thorpe's eyes sought the picture of Dexter's wife with an evident tenderness, mingled with yearning. "I often think," he sighed, "that in Heaven we may have a chance to pay our debt to woman. Through woman's agony we come into the world, by woman's care we are nourished, by woman's wisdom we are taught, by woman's love we are sheltered, and, at the last, it is a woman who closes our eyes. At every crisis of a man's life, a woman is always waiting, to help him if she may, and I have seen that at any crisis in a woman's life, we are apt to draw back and shirk. She helps us bear our difficulties; she faces hers alone."

Dexter turned uneasily in his chair. His face was inscrutable. The silent moment cried out for speech--for anything to relieve the tension. Through Ralph's letters Evelina's eyes seemed to be upon him, beseeching him to speak.

"I knew a man,", said Anthony Dexter, hoa.r.s.ely, "who unintentionally contracted quite an unusual debt to a woman."

"Yes?" returned, Thorpe, inquiringly. He was interested.

"He was a friend of mine," the Doctor continued, with difficulty, "or rather a cla.s.smate. I knew him best at college and afterward--only slightly."

"The debt," Thorpe reminded him, after a pause. "You were speaking, of his debt to a woman."

Dexter turned his face away from Thorpe and from the accusing eyes beneath Ralph's letters. "She was a very beautiful girl," he went on, carefully choosing his words, "and they loved each other as people love but once. My--my friend was much absorbed in chemistry and had a fondness for original experiment. She--the girl, you know--used to study with him. He was teaching her and she often helped him in the laboratory.

"They were to be married," continued Dexter. "The day before they were to be married, he went to her house and invited her to come to the laboratory to see an experiment which he was trying for the first time and which promised to be unusually interesting. I need not explain the experiment--you would not understand.

"On the way to the laboratory, they were talking, as lovers will. She asked him if he loved her because she was herself; because, of all the women in the world, she was the one G.o.d meant for him, or if he loved her because he thought her beautiful.

"He said that he loved her because she was herself, and, most of all, because she was his. 'Then,' she asked, timidly, 'when I am old and all the beauty has gone, you will love me still? It will be the same, even when I am no longer lovely?'

"He answered her as any man would, never dreaming how soon he was to be tested.

"In the laboratory, they were quite alone. He began the experiment, explaining as he went, and she watched it as eagerly as he. He turned away for a moment, to get another chemical. As he leaned over the retort to put it in, he heard it seethe. With all her strength, she pushed him away instantly. There was an explosion which shook the walls of the laboratory, a quant.i.ty of deadly gas was released, and, in the fumes, they both fainted.

"When he came to his senses, he learned that she had been terribly burned, and had been taken on the train to the hospital. He was the one physician in the place and it was the only thing to be done.

"As soon as he could, he went to the hospital. They told him there that her life would be saved and they hoped for her eyesight, but that she would be permanently and horribly disfigured. All of her features were destroyed, they said--she would be only a pitiful wreck of a woman."

Thorpe was silent. His blue eyes were dim with pity. Dexter rose and stood in front of him. "Do you understand?" he asked, in a voice that was almost unrecognisable. "His face was close to the retort when she pushed him away. She saved his life and he went away--he never saw her again. He left her without so much as a word."

"He went away?" asked the minister, incredulously. "Went away and left her when she had so much to bear? Deserted her when she needed him to help her bear it, and when she had saved him from death, or worse?"

"You would not believe it possible?" queried Dexter, endeavouring to make his voice even.

"Of a cur, yes," said the minister, his voice trembling with indignation, "but of a man, no."

Anthony Dexter shrank back within himself. He was breathing heavily, but his companion did not notice.

"It was long ago," the Doctor continued, when he had partially regained his composure. He dared not tell Thorpe that the man had married in the meantime, lest he should guess too much. "The woman still lives, and my--friend lives also. He has never felt right about it. What should he do?"

"The honour of the spoken word still holds him," said Thorpe, evenly.

"As I understand, he asked her to marry him and she consented. He was never released from his promise--did not even ask for it. He slunk away like a cur. In the sight of G.o.d he is bound to her by his own word still. He should go to her and either fulfil his promise or ask for release. The tardy fulfilment of his promise would be the only atonement he could make."

The midnight train came in and stopped, but neither heard it.

"It would be very difficult," Thorpe was saying, "to retain any shred of respect for a man like that. It shows your broad charity when you call him 'friend.' I myself have not so much grace."

Anthony Dexter's breath came painfully. He tightened his fingers on the arm of the chair and said nothing.

"It is a peculiar coincidence," mused Thorpe, He was thinking aloud now. "In the old house just beyond Miss Mehitable's, farther up, you know, a woman has just come to live who seems to have pa.s.sed through something like that. It would be strange, would it not, if she were the one whom your--friend--had wronged?"

"Very," answered Dexter, in a voice the other scarcely heard.

"Perhaps, in this way, we may bring them together again. If the woman is here, and you can find your friend, we may help him to wash the stain of cowardice off his soul. Sometimes," cried Thorpe pa.s.sionately, "I think there is no sin but shirking. I can excuse a liar, I can pardon a thief, I can pity a murderer, but a shirk--no!"

His voice broke and his wrinkled old hands trembled.

"My--my friend," lied Anthony Dexter, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead, "lives abroad. I have no way of finding him."

"It is a pity," returned Thorpe. "Think of a man meeting his G.o.d like that! It tempts one to believe in a veritable h.e.l.l!"

"I think there is a veritable h.e.l.l," said Dexter, with a laugh which was not good to hear. "I think, by this time, my friend must believe in it as well. I remember that he did not, before the--it, I mean, happened."

Far from feeling relief, Anthony Dexter was scourged anew. A thousand demons leaped from the silence to mock him; the earth rolled beneath his feet. The impulse of confession was strong upon him, even in the face of Thorpe's scorn. He wondered why only one church saw the need of the confessional, why he could not go, even to Thorpe, and share the burden that oppressed his guilty soul.

The silence was not to be borne. The walls of the room swayed back and forth, as though they were of fabric and stirred by all the winds of h.e.l.l. The floor undulated; his chair sank dizzily beneath him.

Dexter struggled to his feet, clutching convulsively at the table. His lips were parched and his tongue clung to the roof of his mouth.

"Thorpe," he said, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, "I----"

The minister raised his hand. "Listen! I thought I heard----"

A whistle sounded outside, the gate clanged shut. A quick, light step ran up the walk, the door opened noisily, and a man rushed in. He seemed to bring into that hopeless place all the freshness of immortal Youth.

Blinded, Dexter moved forward, his hands outstretched to meet that eager clasp.

"Father! Father!" cried Ralph, joyously; "I've come home!"