But the panic of the night was gone with the darkness; and with it all thought--if in the depths he had really sunk so low--of relinquishing the woman he loved to the powers of evil.
To the powers of evil! To a fate as much worse than death as the soul and the mind are higher than the body! Was he really face to face with that?
Was this house, so quiet, so peaceful, so commonplace, in reality the theatre of one of those manifestations of Satan's power which were the horror of the age?
His senses affirmed it, and yet he doubted.

Such things were, he did not deny it.

Few men of the time denied it.

But presented to him, brought within his experience, they shocked him to the point of disbelief.

He found that from the thing which he was prepared to admit in the general, he dissented fiercely and instinctively in the particular.
What, the woman he loved! Was he to believe her delivered, soul and body, to the power of Satan?
Never! All that was sane and wholesome and courageous in the man rebelled against the thought.