d Wardenhurst?" pursued Crowther.

"Yes," said Piers again. "Ever been there?"

"No," Crowther spoke slowly, as though considering his words. "Someone I
know lives there, that's all."

"Someone you know?" Piers stood still. He looked at Crowther sharply
through the dimness.

"I don't suppose you have ever met her, lad," said Crowther quietly.
"From what I know of society in the old country you wouldn't move in the
same circle. But as I have promised myself to visit her, it seems better
to mention the fact."

"Why shouldn't you mention it? What is her name?" Piers spoke quickly, in
the imperious fashion habitual to him when not quite at his ease.

Crowther hesitated. He seemed to be debating some point with himself.

At length, "Her name," he said slowly, "is Denys."

Piers made a sudden movement that passed unexplained. There fell a few
moments of silence. Then, in a voice even more measured than
Crowther's, he spoke.

"As it happens, I have met her. Tell me what you know about her,--if you
don't mind."

Again Crowther hesitated.

"Go on," said Piers.

They were facing one another in the darkness. The end of Piers' cigar had
ceased to glow. He did not seem to be breathing. But in the tense moments
that followed his words there came to Crowther the hard, quick beating of
his heart like the thud of a racing engine far away.

Instinctively he put out a hand. "Piers, old chap,--" he said.

"Go on!" Piers said again.

He gripped both hand and wrist with nervous fingers, holding them almost
as though he would force from him the information he desired.

Crowther waited no longer, for he knew in that moment that he stood in
the presence of a soul in torment. "You'll have to know it," he said,
"though why these things happen, God alone knows. Sonny, she is the widow
of the man whose death you caused."

The words were spoken, and after them came silence--such a silence as
could be felt. Once the hands that gripped Crowther's seemed about to
slacken, and then in a moment they tightened again as the hands of a
drowning man clinging to a spar.

Crowther attempted nothing in the way of sympathy or consolation. He
merely stood ready. But it was evident that he did not need to be told
of the tragedy that had suddenly fallen upon Piers' life. His attitude
said as much.

Very, very slowly at last, as if not wholly sure of his balance, Piers
let him go. He took out his cigar with a mechanical movement and
looked a