The miner took this simple statement as a challenging question. His excitement visibly increased, but he did not at once reply. He talked on aimlessly, incoherently, struggling like a small animal in a torrent. He rose at last, and as he stood in the doorway, breathing deeply, his face livid in the sunset light, the muscles of his jaw trembled.
The stranger observed his host's agitation, but put away his pipe with slow and steady hand. He said nothing, and yet an observer would have declared he held the other and weaker man in the grasp of an inexorable hypnotic silence. Finally he fixed a calm, cold glance upon his host, as if summoning him to answer.
"Yes," the miner confessed, "there is always a woman in the case—another and more fortunate man. The woman is false, the man is treacherous. You trust and they betray. Such beings ruin and madden—they make outlaws such as I am—"
"Love is above will," asserted the millwright, with decision.
The other man fiercely turned. "I know what you mean—you mean the woman is not to be condemned—that love goes where it is drawn. That is true, but deceit is not involuntary—it is deliberate—"
"Sometimes we deceive ourselves."
"In her case it was deceit," retorted the miner, who was now so deeply engaged with his own story that each general observation on the part of his guest was taken to be specific and personal.
The room was growing dusky, and the stranger's glance appeared keener, more insistent, as his body melted into the shadow. His shaggy head and black beard all but disappeared; only the faint outlines of his forehead remained, and yet, as his physical self faded into the gloom, his personality, his psychic self, loomed larger. His will enveloped the hermit, drawing upon him with irresistible power. It was as if he were wringing him dry of a confession as the priest closes in upon the culprit.
"I had my happy days—my days of care-free youth," the unquiet man was saying. "But my time of innocence was short. Evil companions came early and reckless deeds followed.... I knew I was losing something, I knew I was being drawn downward, but I could not escape. Day and night I called for help, and then—she came—"
"Who came?"