"Do you think so?" she answered from her dark corner.

"Surely. His intellect is really alive. Yet, with all his scientific
knowledge and his power of eliciting facts and elucidating them, he is
but a feather headed man." I paused, but she made no answer. "Do you not
think so?"

"How can I tell?" she replied. "We only talked about fishing. He managed
to make that topic a pleasant one."

Her tone was frank. I felt relieved.

"He is exceedingly clever," I said, heartily, and we relapsed into
silence.

When we reached home, and Margot had removed her cloak, she came up to
me and laid her hand on my arm.

So unaccustomed was her touch now that I was startled. She was looking
at me with a curious, steady smile--an unwavering smile that chilled
instead of warming me.

"Ronald," she said, "there has been a breach between us. I have been the
cause of it. I should like to--to heal it. Do you still love me as you
did?"

I did not answer immediately; I could not. Her voice, schooled as it
was, seemed somehow at issue with the words she uttered. There was a
desperate, hard note in it that accorded with that enigmatic smile of
the mouth.

It roused a cold suspicion within me that I was close to a masked
battery. I shrank physically from the touch of her hand.

She waited with her eyes upon me. Our faces were lit tremblingly by the
flames of the two candles we held.

At last I found a voice.

"Can you doubt it?" I asked.

She drew a step nearer.

"Then let us resume our old relations," she said.

"Our old relations?"

"Yes."

I shuddered as if a phantom stole by me. I was seized with horror.

"To-night? It is not possible!"

"Why?" she said, still with that steady smile of the mouth.

"Because--because I don't know--I---- To-morrow it shall be as of old,
Margot--to-morrow. I promise you."

"Very well. Kiss me, dear."

I forced myself to touch her lips with mine.

Which mouth was the colder?

Then, with that soft, stealthy step of hers, she vanished towards her
room. I heard the door close gently.

I listened. The key was not turned in the lock.

This sudden abandonment by Margot of the fantastic precautions I had
almost become accustomed to filled me with a nameless dread.

That night I fastened my door for the first time.

IV.

_Friday Night, November 6th_.

I fastened my door, and when I went to bed lay awake for hours
listening. A horror was upon me then which has not left me since