“God help me, dear; if I had only realized—”

“What is this horror?”

“Men begin to speak evil of us.”

“Evil of us?”

“Yes.”

“Impossible!”

“Too possible, thanks to my madness.”

“But we have done nothing!”

“Nothing. It is the world’s charity, the business of brutes to conceive evil.”

She stood motionless a moment and then started towards him with a sudden outburst of despair.