He acted without malice and without scruple or remorse.

His conduct exhibited a passionless expediency which was rather dreadful because utterly unhuman.

But he was a strong man--a courageous, self-contained man, and I had been better pleased if it could have been ordained that some other hand than mine should let the axe fall." Thorndyke's compunction may appear strange and inconsistent, but yet his feeling was also my own.

Great as were the misery and suffering that this inscrutable man had brought into the lives of those I loved, I forgave him; and in his downfall forgot the callous relentlessness with which he had pursued his evil purpose.

For he it was who had brought Ruth into my life; who had opened for me the Paradise of Love into which I had just entered.