At that moment he would have endured centuries of torment just to have undone what could never be undone; and an awful thought that he had not dared allow into the daylight of his mind, suddenly sprang hideous in full view of his stricken soul: the thought that, however he might soothe its intolerable pain, he it was who had--killed Jenny.

"She seems to have had a shock," a voice was saying over and over again, "she seems to have had a shock." A shock! Yes! and Isabel, whom all this time, he had kept thrust in the outer darkness of thought, forbidding his soul to breathe her name, now sprang into vivid light again in company with that thought.

In that moment he felt to hate her, and it was with a cruel mental oath he hurled her back again into the dark.

It was she, _she_ who had made him--kill Jenny! But this was a thought that either must kill him, or be made endurable by some advocate of the stricken conscience; and it was with no wish to deceive himself, or to escape from his sin, that Theophil told himself that this murder of a soul, to which he pleaded guilty, was indeed no wilful act, but the accident of two tragically conditioned souls, who had planned, at their own agony, a fate of happiest life for Jenny.
Yet, the accuser urged, are not theories of life which thus jeopardise the happiness of human souls theories which it is criminal to hold?
Shall you try your new ways to heaven at the risk of broken hearts?
But a voice said--was it Jenny's ?--this poor Theophil and Isabel love by reason of no theory.

It is yours, O ruling Fates of men, whatever you be, who must support that accusation.