"Victor, my darling heart! Resist this great temptation and peace will come to you. Do the right, and no matter how low you may fall in the eyes of men, you will look upon the face of God."
It was Fenella's voice—he was sure of that. Across the mountain and through the darkness of the night her pure soul was speaking to him.
The candle had burnt to the socket by this time, but a new light came to him. For more than a year he had been a slave, dragging a chain of sin behind him. At every step in his wrong-doing his chain had lengthened. He must break it and be free.
"Yes, I will go up to Government House in the morning," he thought, "confess everything and take my punishment."
It was only right, only just. And when the cruel thought came that the next time he entered the court-house it would be to stand in the dock, with the dread certainty of his doom, he told himself that that would be right too—the Judge also must be judged.
II
Groping his way upstairs in the darkness he entered his bedroom and locked the door behind him. He found a fire burning, the sofa drawn up in front of it, a lamp burning on the bureau that stood at one side, and at the other the high-backed arm-chair in which his father used to undress for bed. He was surprised to see that the fire had been newly made up, but hearing footsteps in the adjoining bedroom he understood.
"Poor Janet!" he thought.
His thoughts were thundering through his brain like waves in a deep cavern. He was convinced that he would never survive the ordeal that was before him. When men lived through long imprisonments it was because they had hope that the beautiful days would come again. He had no such hope, so, sitting at his bureau, he began to sort and arrange his papers like one who was going away on a long journey.
After that he wrote a letter to the Attorney-General: