"Why?" asked Berkley harshly. "Is there any reason on God's earth
why I could ever forgive you?"
"No; no reason perhaps. Yet, you are wrong."
"Wrong!"
"I say so in the light of the past, Berkley. Once I also believed
that a stern, uncompromising attitude toward error was what God
required of an upright heart."
"Error! D-do you admit that?" stammered Berkley. "Are you awake
at last to the deviltry that stirred you--the damnable, misguided,
distorted conscience that twisted you into a murderer of souls? By
God, _are_ you alive to what you did to--_her_?"
Colonel Arran, upright in his saddle and white as death, rode
straight on in front of him.. Beside him, knee to knee, rode
Berkley, his features like marble, his eyes ablaze.
"I am not speaking for myself," he said between his teeth, "I am
not reproaching you, cursing you, for what you have done to me--for
the ruin you have made of life for me, excommunicating me from
every hope, outlawing me, branding me! I am thinking, now, only of
my mother. God!--to think--to _think_ of it--of her----"
Arran turned on him a face so ghastly that the boy was silenced.
Then the older man said:
"Do you not know that the hell men make for others is what they are
destined to burn in sooner or later? Do you think you can tell me
anything of eternal punishment?" He laughed a harsh, mirthless
laugh.
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