It was quite natural, and in keeping with human nature for Wilford to thrust Morris' religion in his face, forgetting that never on this side the eternal world can man cease wholly to sin, that so long as flesh and blood remain, there will be temptation, error and wrong, even among God's children. Morris felt the sneer keenly; but the consciousness of peace with his Maker sustained him in the shock and, with the same tone he had at first assumed, he said: "Should my being what you call a saint prevent my confessing what I did?"
"No, not the confession, but the fact," Wilford answered, savagely. "How do you reconcile your acknowledged love for Katy with the injunctions of the Bible whose doctrines you indorse?"
"A man cannot always control his feelings, but he can strive to overcome them and put the temptation aside. One does not sin in being tempted, but in listening to the temptation."
"Then according to your own reasoning you have sinned, for you not only have teen tempted, but have yielded to the temptation," Wilford retorted, with a sinister look of exultation in his black eyes.
For a moment Morris was silent, while a struggle of some kind seemed going on in his mind, and then he said: "I never thought to lay open to you a secret which, after myself, is, I believe, known to only one living being."
"And that one--is--you will not tell me that is Katy?" Wilford exclaimed, his voice hoarse with passion, and his eyes flashing with fire.
"No, not Katy. She has no suspicion of the pain which, since I saw her made another's, has eaten into my heart, making me grow old so fast, and blighting my early manhood."
Something in Morris' tone and manner inspired Wilford with awe, making him relax his grasp upon the arm, and sending him back to his chair while Morris continued: "Most men would shrink from talking to a husband of the love they bore his wife, and an hour ago I should have shrunk from it, too, but you have forced me to it, and now you must listen while I tell you of my love for Katy. It began longer ago than she can remember--began when she was my baby sister, and I hushed her in my arms to sleep, kneeling by her cradle and watching her with a feeling I have never been able to define. She was in all my thoughts, her face upon the printed page of every book I studied, and her voice in every strain of music I ever heard. Then, when she grew older, I used to watch the frolicsome child by the hour, building castles even then of the future, when she would be a woman and I a man, with a man's right to win her. I know that she shielded me from many a snare into which young men are apt to fall, for when the temptation was greatest, and I was at its verge, a thought of her was sufficient to lead me back to virtue. I carried her in my heart across the sea, and said when I go back I will ask her to be mine. I went back, but at my first meeting with Katy after her return from Canandaigua she told me of you, and I knew then that hope for me was gone, praying for strength to bear my loss and hide my love from her. God grant that you nor she may never experience what I experienced on that day which made her your wife, and I saw her go away. It seemed almost as if God had forgotten me as the night after the bridal I sat alone at home, and met that dark hour of sorrow. In the midst of it Helen came, discovering my secret, and sympathizing with me until the pain at my heart grew less, and I could pray that God would grant me a feeling for Katy which should not be sinful. And He did at last, so I could think of her without a wish that she was mine. Times there were when the old love would burst forth with fearful power, and then I wished that I might die. These were my moments of temptation which I struggled to overcome. Sometimes a song, a strain of music, or a ray of moonlight on the floor would bring the past to me so vividly that I would stagger beneath the burden, feeling that it was greater than I could bear. But God was very merciful and sent me work which took up all my time, leaving little leisure for regrets, and driving me away from my own pain to soothe the pain of others. When Katy came to us last summer there was an hour of trial, when faith in God grew weak, and I was tempted to question the justice of His dealing with me. But that, too, passed, and in my love for your child I forgot the mother in part, looking upon her as a sister rather than the Katy I had loved so well. I would have given my life to have saved that child for her, even though it was a bar between us, a something which separated her from me more than the words she spoke at the altar. Though dead, that baby is still a bar, and Katy is not the same to me she was before that little life came into being. It is not wrong to love her as I do now. I feel no pang of conscience save when something unexpected carries me back to the old ground where I have fought so many battles."