e
servants were taking my luggage in. The spot where we stood on the
terrace, too, was exactly underneath your window. I took him by the arm
and I led him along the little path towards the cliff. When we came to
the open space by the wall, I let him go. I asked him if he had
anything to say. He had nothing. I thrashed him."

"You bully!"

Tallente raised his eyebrows.

"Palliser was twenty years younger than I and of at least equal build
and strength," he said. "It was not my fault that he seemed unable to
defend himself."

"But his disappearance--tell me about that?"

"We were within a few feet of the edge of the cliff. I struck him
harder, Perhaps, than I had intended, and he went over. I stood there
and hooked down, but I could see nothing. I heard the crashing of some
bushes, and after that--silence. I even called out to him, but there
was no reply. Some time later, Robert and I searched the cliff and the
bay below for his body. We discovered nothing."

"It was high tide that night!" she cried. "You know very well that he
must have been drowned!"

"I have answered your question," Tallente replied quietly.

There was a cold fury in her eyes. The veins seemed to stand out on her
clenched, worn hands. She looked at him with all the suppressed passion
of a creature impotent yet fiercely anxious to strike.

"I shall give information," she cried. "You shall be charged with his
murder!"

Tallente shook his head.

"You will waste your time, Stella," he said. "For one thing, a woman
may not give evidence against her husband. Another thing, there cannot
very well be a charge for murder unsupported by the production of the
body. And for a third thing, I should deny the whole story."

Her fury abated, though the hate in her eyes remained.

"I think," she declared, "that you are the most coldblooded creature I
ever knew."

The irony of the situation gripped at him. He rose suddenly to his
feet, filled with an overwhelming desire to end it.

"Stella," he said, "to me you always seemed, especially during our last
few years together, cold and utterly indifferent. I know now that I was
mistaken. In your way you cared for Palliser. You starved me. My own
fault, you would say? Perhaps. But listen. There is a way into every
man's heart and a way into every woman's, but sometimes that way lies
hidden except to the one right person, and you weren't the right person
for me, and I wasn't the right person for you. Now an