“Has he not been punished enough already?”
“I don't understand you,” said Sylvester. “He has broken the law. He has murdered my father. What punishment has he had yet? He shall have his deserts,—whatever term of penal servitude the judge thinks fit to give him.”
“For God's sake have mercy, Sylvester!” cried the girl, leaning forward in her seat, so that her voice should reach him above the rhythmic clatter and the creaking of the train. “If that happened to him, it would kill me. The awful horror of it,—have you thought?”
“I have been trained for years to think deeply before acting, even in trivial matters,” he replied.
“Heaven knows what awful temptation he may have had,” said Ella.
“A man who cannot resist temptation is better out of the world.”
Ella's eyes flashed. The encounter braced her nerves. “Have you always resisted temptation?” she cried in sharp scorn.
“I have lived my life a stainless and an upright man,” he replied sternly.
“So did Christ; but he had pity.”
“I am not Christ. I am mortal, and have my limitations. Listen. This man admitted his forgery. Out of regard for you, I was weak enough to allow him a chance of escape, on certain definite conditions. These he violated, like the scoundrel he is. To let him loose now on society would be a crime on my part.”