"You knew it? What do you mean?" he said. "How could you know it?"
"I felt it, Maurice; do not try any longer to work out alone your own redemption."
"You can say that to me?"
"Yes, for I believe that it is useless—you will fail."
He set his lips together and said nothing. But a frown distorted his face slowly.
"Leave your redemption to God. Oh, Maurice, leave it," Lily said, and there were tears in her eyes. "If this cry of the dead child is his punishment to you it must—it will—endure so long as he pleases. Your efforts cannot still it now. You yourself told me so once."
"I told you?"
"Yes—for the dead are beyond our hands and our lips. We cannot clasp them. We cannot kiss them. We cannot speak to them."
"But they can speak to us and mock us. You are right. I can't still the cry—I can't! Then it's all over with me!"
Suddenly, with a sob, Maurice flung himself down. He felt as if something within him snapped, and as if straightway a dissolution of all the man in him succeeded this rupture of the spirit. Careless of the pride of man, before the world and even in his own home, he gave himself up to a despair that was too weak to be frantic, too complete to be angry; a despair that no longer strove but yielded, that lay down in the dust and wept. Then, presently, raising his head and seeing Lily, in whose eyes were tears of pity, Maurice was seized with an enmity against her, unreasonably wicked, but suddenly so vehement that he did not try to resist it.