h."

"Are _you_ the man to tell me the truth?" retorted the other. "You who
have refused to hear her in her own defense! You who have closed the
doors of this house against her!"

Allan still controlled himself, but the effort began at last to be
visible.

"I know your temper is a hot one," he said. "But for all that, your
violence quite takes me by surprise. I can't account for it, unless"--he
hesitated a moment, and then finished the sentence in his usual frank,
outspoken way--"unless you are sweet yourself on Miss Gwilt."

Those last words heaped fuel on the fire. They stripped the truth
instantly of all concealments and disguises, and laid it bare to view.
Allan's instinct had guessed, and the guiding influence stood revealed
of Midwinter's interest in Miss Gwilt.

"What right have you to say that?" he asked, with raised voice and
threatening eyes.

"I told _you_," said Allan, simply, "when I thought I was sweet on her
myself. Come! come! it's a little hard, I think, even if you are in love
with her, to believe everything she tells you, and not to let me say a
word. Is _that_ the way you decide between us?"

"Yes, it is!" cried the other, infuriated by Allan's second allusion to
Miss Gwilt. "When I am asked to choose between the employer of a spy and
the victim of a spy, I side with the victim!"

"Don't try me too hard, Midwinter, I have a temper to lose as well as
you."

He stopped, struggling with himself. The torture of passion in
Midwinter's face, from which a less simple and less generous nature
might have recoiled in horror, touched Allan suddenly with an artless
distress, which, at that moment, was little less than sublime. He
advanced, with his eyes moistening, and his hand held out. "You asked
me for my hand just now," he said, "and I gave it you. Will you remember
old times, and give me yours, before it's too late?"

"No!" retorted Midwinter, furiously. "I may meet Miss Gwilt again, and I
may want my hand free to deal with your spy!"

He had drawn back along the wall as Allan advanced, until the bracket
which supported the Statuette was before instead of behind him. In the
madness of his passion he saw nothing but Allan's face confronting him.
In the madness of his passion, he stretched out his right hand as he
answered, and shook it threateningly in the air. It struck the forgotten
projection of the bracket--and the next instant the Statuette lay in
fragments on the floor.

The rain drove