to yield to the snares of unlicensed joy, were summed up in the better and truer word innocence. The greater her weakness, the greater his wickedness. If he could not save her from others, he could save her from himself. Then if she fell, it would at least be a natural fall. It would not be a foul betrayal of youth by age; it would not be the sort of degraded crime that makes angels weep, and ordinary people change into judges and executioners.

When a man has reached a certain time of life he must not crave for forbidden delights, he must not permit himself to be eaten up with new desire, he must not risk destroying a girl's soul for the gratification of his own body. If he does, he commits the unpardonable sin. And there is no excuse for him.

The Devil's reasonings to which a few minutes ago he had listened greedily were specious, futile, utterly false. That sort of argument might do for other men -might do for every other man in the wide worldbut it would not do for him, William Dale. Its acceptance would knock the very ground from under his feet.

For, if there could be any excuse, why had he killed Everard Barradine?

XXX

THEN

EN Dale lived again for the hundred thousandth time in the thoughts and passions of that distant

period.

The forest glade grew dim, vanished. He was lying on the grass in a London park, and Mavis' confession rang through the buzzing of his ears, through the chaos of his mind. It seemed that the whole of his small imagined world had gone to pieces, and the immensity of the real world had been left to him in exchangecrushing him with an idea of its unexplored vastness, of its many countries, its myriad races. And yet, big as it all was, it could not provide breathing space for that man and himself.

Soon this became an oppressive certainty. Life under the new conditions had been rendered unendurable. And then there grew up the one solid determination, that he must stand face to face with his enemy and call him to account. It must at last be man to man. He must tell the man what he thought of him, call him filthy names, strip him of every shred of dignity— and strike him. A few blows of scorn might sufficea backhander across the snout, a few swishes with a stick, a kick behind when he turned. He was too rottenly weak a thing to fight with.

His mind refused to go further than this. However deeply and darkly it was working below the surface of

consciousness, it gave him no further directions than

this.

He got rid of his wife. That was the first move in the game-anyhow. He did not want to think about her now; she would be dealt with again later on. At present he wished to concentrate all his attention on the other one.

He took a bed for himself in a humbler and cheaper house farther west, a little nearer to the house of his enemy; and almost all that day he spent in thinking how and where he should obtain the meeting he longed for. He understood at once that it would be hopeless to attempt such an interview at Grosvenor Place. In imagination he saw himself escorted by servants to that tank-like room at the back of the mansion-the room where the man had treated him as dirt, where his first instinct of distrust had been aroused, where all those photographs of girls had subtly suggested the questioning doubts that led him on to suspicion and discovery. The man would come again to this room, with his tired eyes and baggy cheeks and drooping lip; would stare contemptuously; and at the first words of abuse, he would ring a bell, call for servants, call for the police, and have the visitor ignominiously turned out. "Policeman, this ruffian has been threatening me. He is an ill-conditioned dog that I've been systematically kind to, and he now seems to have taken leave of his senses and accuses me of injuring him. For the sake of his wife, who is a good respectful sort of person, I do not give him in charge. But I ask you to keep an eye on him. And if he dares to return to my door, just cart him off to the police station."

No, that would not do at all. He and Mr. Barra

dine must meet somewhere quietly and comfortably, out of reach of electric bells, butlers, and police officers.

That first night after the confession he slept sound and long. In the morning when he woke, feeling refreshed and strengthened, his determination to bring about the interview had assumed an iron firmness, as if all night it had been beaten on the anvil of his thoughts while he lay idle. But he was no nearer to devising a scheme that should give effect to the determination.

Mr. Barradine had said that he was going down to the Abbey to-morrow, or next day, Friday, at latest; and in the course of this Wednesday morning Dale decided that the interview must be delayed. It was impossible up here. It would be much easier to arrange down there. He must wait until Mr. Barradine went down to Hampshire, and go down after him. He could call at the Abbey, where the man would be more accessible than up here; and, by restraining himself, by simulating his usual manner, by lulling the man to a false security, he could lure him out of the houseget him out into the open air, away from his servants, perhaps beyond the gardens and as far off as the park copses. Then when they were alone, they two, at a distance from the possibility of interruption, Dale could drop the mask of subservience, turn upon him, and say "Now

No, that would not do. It was all childish. For a thousand obscure reasons it would not do at all.

Then, brooding over his wife's confession-the things she had merely hinted at as well as the things she had explicitly stated-he remembered how in the beginning the wood near Long Ride was their

meeting-place, how the man had met her there, and led her slowly beneath the trees to the cottage of the procuress. And then an inspiration came. A note to be sent in his wife's name, as soon as Mr. Barradine got home to the Abbey. "Meet me in the West Gate copse. I want to show my gratitude"-or-" I want to thank you again"—something of that sort. "Meet me at the end of North Ride by the Heronry. I will be there if possible four o'clock to-morrow. If not there to-morrow, I will be there next day. Mavis."

He wrote such a letter, in a hand sufficiently like his wife's. Yes, that would fetch him. The old devil would have no suspicions.

Then a cold shiver ran down his spine. It was a thought rising from the depths, warning him, terrifying him. The note would remain afterward. If Mr. Barradine did not destroy it-and very likely he would not do so-the note would be found afterward. But after what?

He tore up the note, tore it into tiny pieces. It seemed to him that he had escaped from a danger. His plan had been the idea of a madman. But why? With his skin still cold and clammy, he found himself whispering words which sounded explanatory, but which did not explain: "Suppose a mistake occurred. Yes, suppose a mistake occurred." Then trying to think quietly and sensibly, instead of in this fluttered, erratic way, he forced himself to interpret the real significence of the whisper. Well, suppose he struck too hard, and too often. But again there came the blankness-an abrupt check to thought-the depths refusing to give anything more to the surface.

He decided that he would go down to Hampshire