to deceive me any more?"

"I have told you the truth," he said.

"Then--then--" She still gazed at him with wide eyes, eyes in which a
certain horror gradually dawned and spread. "I am sure she did not die a
natural death," she said with conviction.

Max was silent, grimly, inexorably silent.

She disengaged herself slowly from him. Her forehead drew itself into
the old painful lines. She passed an uncertain hand across it.

As if in answer to the gesture he spoke, bluntly, almost brutally. "If
you will have it, you shall; but remember, it is final. Miss Campion was
suffering from a hideous and absolutely incurable disease of the brain
which had developed into homicidal madness. She might have lived for
years--a blinded soul fettered to a brain of raving insanity. What her
life would have been, only those who have seen can picture. But,
mercifully for her--rightly or wrongly is not for me to say--her torment
was brought to an early end. In fact, almost before it had begun, a
friend gave her deliverance. She died--as you know--suddenly."

"Ah!" With a cry she broke in upon him. "It was--the pain-killer!"

"It was." He scarcely opened his lips to reply, and instantly closed
them in a single unyielding line. His eyes never left her face.

As for Olga, she stood a moment, as one stunned past all feeling; then
turned from him and moved away. "So it was--your doing," she said, in a
curious, stifled voice as if she were scarcely conscious of speaking at
all.

He did not answer her. The words scarcely demanded an answer.

She reached the table unsteadily, and sat down, leaning her elbow upon
it, her chin on her hand. Her eyes gazed right away down far vistas
unbounded by time or space.

"It isn't the first time, is it?" she said. "You did it once before. I
suppose--" her voice dropped still lower; she seemed to be speaking to
herself--"as a Keeper of the Door, you think you have the right."

"Will you tell me what you mean?" he said.

She did not turn her head. She still gazed upon invisible things. "Do
you remember poor old Mrs. Stubbs? You helped her, didn't you, in the
same way?"

"I?" said Max.

The utter astonishment of his voice reached her. She turned and looked
at him. "She died in the same way," she said.

"But--great heavens above--not with my connivance!" he exclaimed.

She continued to look at him, but with that same far look, as though she
saw many things besides. "Yet--you knew!" she said.