ard pressed
until his strength is gone, and he can flee no farther. He imagined
himself to be that man shivering in the gloom in a strange place, hiding
eyes and ears lest he see or hear something from which he cannot escape.
He imagined the morning light to come, very slow and cold and gray, and
in it he saw round about him a silent ring of enemies, the men who had
pursued him and run him down. He saw them standing there in the pale
dawn, motionless, waiting for the day, and he knew that at last the
chase was over and he near done for.

Crouching alone in the garden, with the scent of roses in his nostrils,
he wondered with a great and bitter amazement at that madman--himself of
only a few months ago--who had sat down deliberately, in his proper
senses, to play at cards with Fate, the great winner of all games. He
wondered if, after all, he had been in his proper senses, for the deed
now loomed before him gigantic and hideous in its criminal folly. His
mind went drearily back to the beginning of it all, to the tremendous
debts which had hounded him day and night, to his fear to speak of them
with his father, who had never had the least mercy upon gamblers. He
remembered as if it were yesterday the afternoon upon which he learned
of young Arthur's quarrel with his grandfather, old David's senile
anger, and the boy's tempestuous exit from the house, vowing never to
return. He remembered his talk with old David later on about the will,
in which he learned that he was now to have Arthur's share under certain
conditions. He remembered how that very evening, three days after his
disappearance, the lad had come secretly to the rue du Faubourg St.
Honore begging his uncle to take him in for a few days, and how, in a
single instant that was like a lightning flash, the Great Idea had come
to him.

What gigantic and appalling madness it had all been! And yet for a time
how easy of execution! For a time. Now.... He gave another quick shiver,
for his mind came back to what beset him and compassed him round
about--perils seen and hidden.

The peril seen was ever before his eyes. Against the light of day it
loomed a gigantic and portentous shadow, and it threatened him--the
figure of Ste. Marie _who knew_. His reason told him that if due care
were used this danger need not be too formidable, and, indeed, in his
heart he rather despised Ste. Marie as an individual; but the man's
nerve was broken, and in these days fear swept waveli