should play again--and I've come to feel as if I'd never
played it before. I've played it with all the odds against me, and I've
made a good fight."

"Yes, too good," I said.

"Aye, aye! But I've lost. So I'm off." He lay back in the big chair--the
same one in which Lacey had stretched his graceful, lithe young
body--and looked up at me where I stood on the rug. "There's not much
more to say, is there? I thought I'd say that much to you because you're
a good fellow."

"And you're not," I retorted angrily--(Remember our nerves!) "Have you
no care for what you love?"

"Am I so much the worse man of the two?" he asked.

"What's that got to do with it? Well, thank God you're going to-morrow!"

"Everybody always thanks God when I go, and I generally thank Him
myself--but not to-day, perhaps." His next prod at the coals in the
grate was a vicious one. "I suppose that some day there'll be a general
feeling that I must be wiped out--an instinctive revolt against my
existence, Austin. This neighborhood has felt the thing already. Some
day it will be felt where stronger measures than cutting are in fashion.
Then I shall be killed. Perhaps I shall kill, too, but they'll get me in
the end, depend upon it!" Suddenly he smiled in a tender reflective way.
"That was what poor little Madge was always so afraid of. Well, I had a
good deal to try my temper while she was with me." He looked up at me,
smiling now in mockery. "Don't be shocked, my excellent Austin. I'm
talking about my wife."

"Your wife!" I cried in utter surprise and consternation.

That was exactly the effect he intended to produce and enjoyed
producing. Amidst all his distress he found leisure to indulge his taste
for administering shocks.

"You've always thought of me as a bachelor, haven't you? I suppose
everybody thinks so--except one person. Well, it's no affair of theirs,
and they've never chosen to inquire. I didn't mean to tell you, but the
reference to her slipped out."

"You've had a wife all this time?" I gasped, sinking into a chair
opposite to him.

He laughed openly at me. "Poor old Austin! No, it's not Powers over
again." (So he knew about Powers!) "The poor child's been dead these
twelve years."

I shrugged my shoulders impatiently. "Does it really amuse you to play
the fool just now?"

"It amused me to make you jump." He watched me with a malicious grin for
half a minute, then fell to prodding the coals again. "We were boy and
girl--and