Ah,
you shudder! It _was_ strange--very strange. It maddened me that he
should wear your ring--my ring--so I wrenched it from him."

She listens like one in the thralls of a hideous nightmare. If Carol
comes now--he is lost!

"Why, when I had him by the throat," asks Philip, "did I not strangle
the life from his body? Why did I stay my hand? How was it I watched
your happiness with hungry eyes, and did not strike? I could have shot
you dead in each other's arms scores of times. I inexorably determined
on his death, but held the sword suspended, like Damocles, by a single
hair."

She listens acutely to his every syllable.

"Why?" she stammers feebly, her mind groping in the dark.

"So long as he was faithful to you--so long as he valued what you flung
at his feet, I would not wake you from your Elysium. By this I
_proved_ the love you discredit. My action should not plunge you into
an abyss of woe; but _now_ that he is false--_false as Hell_----"

"Liar!" breaks in Eleanor hotly; "your miserable accusation is
unfounded."

"Wait. When he left you for long days of 'sport,' what do you think
was the nature of that chase?"

Eleanor is silent, numbed by dread and despair.

"His game--was a woman, who knew from his lips your whole history. I
have seen them together for hours at a time--heard them speak--jest at
your expense. But, in spite of this, she was jealous of you, and, but
for a bad shot, would have taken your life that day in the jungle, when
I killed her horse under her. You see I was guarding you, Eleanor. He
has been scheming to go away with her; to desert you as a toy that is
broken--a flower which has lost its scent."

She leaps to her feet, and flings open the window.

"You are hoodwinking me with a trumped-up story; it is not true!"

"Hear me out. He is serving you as you treated me. It is retribution.
You forfeited his respect and consideration. He gave you only the
brief glamour of his passion, which has died, to re-live in the smiles
of 'Paulina.'"

"Philip, these lies are dastardly--cruel! You do not know what you are
saying."

"You cling hard to your faith!" he retorts savagely, her staunchness to
Carol awaking a fever of indignation within him. "Did I ever in the
old days deserve that hard term 'liar'?"

She shakes her head. "Oh, no!"

"You are waiting for him to-night, Eleanor. He had promised, I
believe, to return?"

She gazes down the slanting road.

"Yes.