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‘You are to use this money on the Stock Exchange, I think?’ remarked the visitor; ‘and there, if I mistake not, you have already lost some thousands?’

‘Ah,’ said Markheim, ‘but this time I have a sure thing. ’

‘This time, again, you will lose,’ replied the visitor quietly.

‘Ah, but I keep back the half!’ cried Markheim.

‘That also you will lose,’ said the other.

The sweat started upon Markheim’s brow. ‘Well, then, what matter?’ he exclaimed. ‘Say it be lost, say I am plunged again in poverty, shall one part of me, and that the worse, continue until the end to override the better? Evil and good run strong in me, haling me both ways. I do not love the one thing, I love all. I can conceive great deeds, renunciations, martyrdoms; and though I be fallen to such a crime as murder, pity is no stranger to my thoughts. I pity the poor; who knows their trials better than myself? I pity and help them; I prize love, I love honest laughter; there is no good thing nor true thing on earth but I love it from my heart. And are my vices only to direct my life, and my virtues to lie without effect, like some passive lumber of the mind? Not so; good, also, is a spring of acts. ’

But the visitant raised his finger. ‘For six–and–thirty years that you have been in this world,’ said be, ‘through many changes of fortune and varieties of humour, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen years ago you would have started at a theft. Three years back you would have blenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is there any cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil? — five years from now I shall detect you in the fact! Downward, downward, lies your way; nor can anything but death avail to stop you. ’

‘It is true,’ Markheim said huskily, ‘I have in some degree complied with evil. But it is so with all: the very saints, in the mere exercise of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their surroundings. ’

‘I will propound to you one simple question,’ said the other; ‘and as you answer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown in many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so — and at any account, it is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in any one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with your own conduct, or do you go in all things with a looser rein?’

‘In any one?’ repeated Markheim, with an anguish of consideration. ‘No,’ he added, with despair, ‘in none! I have gone down in all. ’

‘Then,’ said the visitor, ‘content yourself with what you are, for you will never change; and the words of your part on this stage are irrevocably written down. ’

Markheim stood for a long while silent, and indeed it was the visitor who first broke the silence. ‘That being so,’ he said, ‘shall I show you the money?’

‘And grace?’ cried Markheim.

‘Have you not tried it?’ returned the other. ‘Two or three years ago, did I not see you on the platform of revival meetings, and was not your voice the loudest in the hymn?’

‘It is true,’ said Markheim; ‘and I see clearly what remains for me by way of duty. I thank you for these lessons from my soul; my eyes are opened, and I behold myself at last for what I am. ’

At this moment, the sharp note of the door–bell rang through the house; and the visitant, as though this were some concerted signal for which he had been waiting, changed at once in his demeanour.

‘The maid!’ he cried. ‘She has returned, as I forewarned you, and there is now before you one more difficult passage. Her master, you must say, is ill; you must let her in, with an assured but rather serious countenance — no smiles, no overacting, and I promise you success! Once the girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity that has already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last danger in your path. Thenceforward you have the whole evening — the whole night, if needful — to ransack the treasures of the house and to make good your safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of danger. Up!’ he cried; ‘up, friend; your life hangs trembling in the scales: up, and act!’

Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor. ‘If I be condemned to evil acts,’ he said, ‘there is still one door of freedom open — I can cease from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I be, as you say truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can yet, by one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of all. My love of good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it be! But I have still my hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling disappointment, you shall see that I can draw both energy and courage. ’

The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and lovely change: they brightened and softened with a tender triumph, and, even as they brightened, faded and dislimned. But Markheim did not pause to watch or understand the transformation. He opened the door and went downstairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past went soberly before him; he beheld it as it was, ugly and strenuous like a dream, random as chance–medley — a scene of defeat. Life, as he thus reviewed it, tempted him no longer; but on the further side he perceived a quiet haven for his bark. He paused in the passage, and looked into the shop, where the candle still burned by the dead body. It was strangely silent. Thoughts of the dealer swarmed into his mind, as he stood gazing. And then the bell once more broke out into impatient clamour.

He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a smile.

‘You had better go for the police,’ said he: ‘I have killed your master. ’