t one. You say you know everything. That may be so, and again
it may not. In either case, our points of view do not coincide. I will
wait until that telegram comes; but it is not my intention to go to my
wife--whatever it may contain."

Jack bit his lip savagely. "In short, you don't care what happens to
her!" he said. "You want to be rid of her--one way or another. And you
don't care how!"

He spoke recklessly, uttering the thought that had come uppermost in his
mind without an instant's consideration. Perhaps instinctively he sought
to rouse the devil that till then had been held in such rigid control.
But the effect of his words was such as he had scarcely looked for.

Mordaunt turned with the movement of a goaded creature and gripped him by
the shoulder. "You believe that?" he said.

They stood face to face. Mordaunt was as white as death. His eyes in that
moment were terrible. But it seemed to Jack that they expressed more of
anguish than of anger, and he felt as if he had seen a soul in torment.
He averted his own instinctively. It was a sight upon which he could not
look.

"Do you believe it?" Mordaunt said, his voice very low.

"No!" Impulsively Jack made answer. That instant's revelation had
quenched his own fire very effectually. "Forgive me!" he said. "I--didn't
understand."

The hand on his shoulder relaxed slowly. There fell a silence. Then, "All
right, Jack," Mordaunt said very quietly.

And Jack knew that he had dropped the veil again that shrouded his soul's
agony.

"You will wait here for that telegram?" Mordaunt asked, after a moment.

"Yes, please."

"Will you come into the other room? Rupert is with me."

"No. I'll wait here, thanks."

"Very well. I shall see you again." Mordaunt crossed to the door, then
paused, and after a moment came slowly back to the table.

He stood before it in silence, looking down upon the portrait that Jack
had laid there as one looks upon the face of the dead.

His face showed no sign of softening, yet Jack made a last effort to move
him. "You're not going to let her fret her heart out for you? You'll go
back to her if she is wanting you? Damn it, Trevor! You can't know what
she is suffering! And after all--she is your wife!"

Mordaunt's mouth hardened. He made no response.

"Surely you don't--you can't--think evil of her?" Jack said.

Mordaunt raised his eyes slowly. "You have said enough," he said, with
quiet emphasis. "As for this portrait, take it