ventionally to gain time. On another occasion he might
have humoured such a whim, but to-night it goaded him almost beyond
endurance. Surely they had passed that stage, he and she.

With an effort he controlled himself, but it sounded in his voice as
he made reply.

"My engagement to you stands before any other. What is it you want to
say to me?"

Her expression changed slightly at his words, and a shade of
apprehension flitted across her face. She threw him a swift upward
glance, half-scared, half-questioning. Unconsciously her hands locked
themselves together.

"I want you not to be vexed, Nick," she said, in a low voice.

He made an abrupt movement. "My dear girl, don't be silly. What's the
trouble? Let me hear it and have done."

His tone was reassuring. She looked up at him with more confidence.

"Yes, I am silly," she acknowledged. "I'm perfectly idiotic to fancy
for a moment that it can make any difference to you. Nick, I have been
thinking things over seriously, and--and--I find that I can't marry
you after all. I hope you won't mind, though of course--" she uttered
a little laugh that was piteously insincere--"I know you will feel
bound to say you do. But--anyhow--you needn't say it to me, because I
understand. I thought it was only fair to let you know at once."

"Thank you," said Nick, and there was that in his voice which was like
the sudden snapping of a tense spring.

She saw his hands clench with the words, and an overwhelming sense
of danger swept over her. Instinctively she started to her feet. If a
tiger had leapt in upon her through the window she could not have been
more terrified.

Nick took a single stride towards her, and she stopped as if struck
powerless. His face was the face she had once seen bent over a man in
his death-agony, convulsed with passion, savage, merciless,--the face
of a devil.

She shrank away from him in nameless terror, gasping and
panic-stricken. "Nick," she whispered, "are you--mad?"

He answered her jerkily in a strangled voice that was like the snarl
of a beast. "Yes--I am mad. If you try to run away from me now--I
won't answer for myself."

She gazed at him with widening eyes. "But, but--" she faltered--"I--I
don't understand. Oh, Nick, you frighten me!"

It was the cry of a child, lost, bewildered, piteous. Had she
withstood him, had she sought to escape, the demon in him would have
burst the last restraining bond, and have shattered in one moment of
u