. But if you stay here
and talk to me, you'll leave this place in manacles! I'm here, _among
those women_, and I'm with you! My secret will come out and drag you
down, as I planned it should before I began to like you! And you like
me, too--I feel it. For _my_ sake, then, for God's sake and for your
sake, _won't you go_?"

"No!" cried Mr. Montagu, almost roughly in his eagerness. "I don't judge
you, but it's your duty, and in your power, to put me where I can! I
harbored you, thinking you were a frightened fugitive, and you weren't.
I'm your voluntary host in circumstances of mysterious horror and you
ask me to quit you in ignorance! I won't! You sicken me with a doubt
about the wife I loved--Who are you? What are you?"

"If you believed I knew as much of her as I said I did," cried the boy,
"why don't you believe me when I assure you that she loved you? What
more should _you_ demand? I meant everything I said, and more--your wife
was nothing but a licensed wanton, _and you knew it_! You ask me who and
what I am--so long as she loved you, who are _you_, and what are _you_,
to point a finger at her?"

A rush of instinctive fury filled the man, but he felt as dazed at
finding himself angry at the beautiful unhappy youth, as if he had known
him for years, and he only gasped and stared.

"If you think I'm crazy," cried the boy, "I'll show you, as I showed you
once before, that I know what I'm talking about! I'll tell you something
that was a secret between you two, and your wife didn't tell me, either!
The night you'd been here, after you'd gone home, _after you were locked
in your room_, you disputed about this place! She refused to come here
again, and she refused to tell you why! But I know why!"

Once more Mr. Montagu gasped and with a thrill of wondering terror.

"Who are you and what are you?" he demanded. "I command you to solve
this mystery and solve it now!"

His voice had risen to a shout, but a sudden lump in his throat silenced
it, for the boy was weeping again.

"Oh," wept the boy, "if you've liked me at _all_, put it off as long as
you can, for you'll make me tell you I hate you, and _why_ I hate you!"

"_Hate_ me?"

It had struck Henry Montagu like a flail in the face, wiping away his
anger, his astonishment at the boy's uncanny knowledge, even his
astonishment that the word was able to strike him so.

"I--I've suffered enough through you!" he stammered painfully. "And if
I've got to suffer more,