At the determined finality of the voice the boy quivered like a helpless thing, and his stuttering ejaculations came as if shaken out of him by the shivering of his body.
"Wh—who am I?"
"Yes!"
"Wh—what am I?"
"Yes!"
Never yet had he been so awful as in the torment and majesty that gazed like fate at Henry Montagu now, and the frightful fire of the eyes seemed to dry up the tears on his cheeks at its first flare of accusing righteousness.
"I'm the child that you and your wife refused to have!"
As the aghast man shrank back before his blighting fury, he leaned farther and farther toward him.
"Now do you know why I hate you as no human thing can hate? Your wilful waste has made my hideous want! Now do you know why I said I'd done a more terrific thing than had ever been done in the world's history before? I've gotten in! At last, at last, I've gotten in, in spite of you, and after she was dead! I've done a greater and more impossible thing than that great Mystery the world adores! I've gotten in despite you, and without even a woman's help! When we spoke of that life once before to-night, I shocked you! Do you believe now that my history is more terrible, or not? He suffered, and suffered, and He died. But He'd lived! His torture was a few hours—for mine to-night, I've waited almost as many years as He did, and to what end? To nothing! God, God, do you see that?"
He twisted open his hands and held out his bruised wrists before the trembling man's eyes. "For all those years—"