ld and terror, and was found unconscious in the early
morning under the archway of a house some two miles from her sister's
lodgings.'

There was a dead silence. Then Rose drew a long quivering breath.

'I do not believe it!' she said passionately. 'I cannot believe it!'

'It was amply proved at the time,' said Langham drily, 'though of course
Madame Desforets tried to put her own colour on it. But I told you I had
private information. On one of the floors of the house where Elise Romey
was picked up, lived a young university professor. He is editing an
important Greek text, and has lately had business at the Museum. I made
friends with him there. He walked home with me this afternoon, saw the
announcement of Madame Desforets's coming, and poured out the story. He
and his wife nursed the unfortunate girl with devotion. She lived just a
week, and died of inflammation of the lungs. I never in my life heard
anything so pitiful as his description of her delirium, her terror, her
appeals, her shivering misery of cold.'

There was a pause.

'She is not a woman,' he said presently, between his teeth. 'She is a
wild beast.'

Still there was silence, and still he held out his hand to the flame
which Rose too was staring at. At last he turned round.

'I have told you a shocking story,' he said hurriedly. 'Perhaps I ought
not to have done it. But, as you sat there talking so lightly, so gaily,
it suddenly became to me utterly intolerable that that woman should ever
sit here in this room--talk to you--call you by your name--laugh with
you--touch your hand! Not even your wilfulness shall carry you so
far--you _shall_ not do it!'

He hardly knew what he said. He was driven on by a passionate sense of
physical repulsion to the notion of any contact between her pure fair
youth and something malodorous and corrupt. And there was besides a wild
unique excitement in claiming for once to stay--to control her.

Rose lifted her head slowly. The fire was bright. He saw the tears in
her eyes, tears of intolerable pity for another girl's awful story. But
through the tears something gleamed--a kind of exultation--the
exultation which the magician feels when he has called spirits from the
vasty deep, and after long doubt and difficult invocation they rise at
last before his eyes.

'I will never see her again,' she said in a low wavering voice, but she
too was hardly conscious of her own words. Their looks were on each
other; the ruddy