"You have followed me," said Mallare inside his chamber. "Very well. It
is useless to explain matters to you. You pursue me with your lecherous
body. I have warned you. Now I will kill you. I will take your throat in
my hands and that will be an end of you. You will fall down."

The beggar uttered a cry of terror. Mallare's hands had reached suddenly
to his throat and their fingers, like inviolable decisions, closed on
it. The ragged one screamed. A man with a slant of black hair across his
forehead who had stood smiling at him had without sound or warning
reached out his hands to murder him. The beggar gasped and writhed, his
eyes staring with horror into the immobile face of his assailant. And
within himself Mallare continued the strange conversation.

"You see how simple it is," he said. "After you are dead I will continue
to enjoy for a time the uninterrupted image of you. You will haunt my
thought until you grow dim. But I will possess the vanishing shadow....
But now you die."

Mallare tightened his hold on the beggar's neck and the man's cries
ended. His head fell forward. Mallare held the dead figure erect,
shaking it gently and smiling at the one in his thought.

"Ah, Rita," he whispered, "it is over now."

His hands released the throat they were holding. The beggar fell to the
ground. Mallare stared at the body and then knelt beside it. His hands
passed over the dead face.

"Poor Rita," he continued. "No longer dangerous."

He bent over and kissed the matted hair of the dead man.

"Death," he said aloud as he rose, "is an easy friendship. You would
have been sorry a moment ago. But now you are neither sorry nor glad.
See, your body is a humble little gratitude."

Mallare walked away. His thought, like a cautious monitor, re-entered
the doors that had closed upon it.

"Curious," he said aloud, "she followed me and I killed her. Madness is,
alas, too logical. I remember almost nothing of the incident. It is a
part of the shadows not of me. Still I know it exists. My hands feel
tired. But there is nothing to regret. She came too close. And now she
lies dead in a strange street. They will find her and perhaps ask me
about it. What do I know? Nothing. My memory is innocent. It is after
all my superior. I must remain, unquestioning, at its side. This is a
pact."

He returned to his home. The familiar room greeted him like a
friendship. He sat down and closed his eyes. Goliath had gone to bed.
And sh