lose for ever all hopes of
recovering those papers?"

"I don't know."

There was a note of sadness in her voice, a note almost as unfamiliar as
the brevity of her reply.

"To what compassion is the man entitled who struck me down?"

"You don't know--you don't know what made him do it. He may have been
forced to do it for the sake of his companion, to save both of them."

"Save himself and his companion from what? From capture while committing
an outrage and a robbery. I do not see where any reason for compassion
comes in, Mrs. Burke."

"And you would show him none?"

"None," he answered fiercely. "I look upon that man, whoever and
wherever he may be, as a menace to mankind. He is unfit to be at large."

"If you saw him, you would shoot him?"

"If I saw him I should try and capture him and hand him over for trial."

"But if you could not capture him? If he were escaping from you?"

"Then I would shoot him--shoot him like a dog, and be satisfied I had
done my duty."

He stood up as he spoke and came into the moonlight, his face hard set,
his eyes gleaming.

She raised her hands and held them out towards him with so impetuous a
gesture that he drew back.

"I hope that you may never meet him--never--never," she said in a low
voice which vibrated with emotion.

"Why?"

Durham rapped out the question in a savage staccato.

"Because I--oh!" she exclaimed, as she shuddered. "It is so horrible to
think of, to think that you who--when you were delirious, Mr. Durham,
you used to talk--you used to say things so full of tenderness and
sympathy that I wondered--wondered whether you were then your real self
or whether your real self was the man you are now--hard, stern,
pitiless, relentless. It was because of that I asked you if you ever
felt compassion for those you chase to their doom. I would rather
remember you as the man I learned to know when you unconsciously
revealed to me your other nature. It is only as that I care to remember
you. But if you met that man and killed him--oh, how could I bear to
think of you as a murderer? It would kill me!"

"I should not be a murderer. I should be carrying out my duty--a duty I
hope I may never be called upon to perform, but one which I should not
shrink from performing if I were called on by circumstances to perform
it."

For a space there was another silence between them, until he remembered
she was standing.

"Will you not sit down?" he said quietly. "Let me br