yself, people would not credit me."

He thought also, in intervals between the paroxysms, "I suppose what
I've been feeling is what all murderers feel. It is this that makes
men go and give themselves up to the police after they have got off
scot free. They are safe, but they never can believe they're safe;
they can't stand the strain, and if they didn't stop it, they'd go
mad. So they give themselves up--just go get a bit o' quiet. And that
is what I shall do, if this goes on much longer. I'd sooner be turned
off short and sharp with a broken neck than die of exhaustion in a
padded cell."

Then suddenly chance gave the hateful money an immense value,
converted it into a means of escape from the outer life whose monotony
and narrowness were assisting the cruelly wide inner life to drive him
mad.

He went to Vine-Pits, and the strangeness of his surroundings, the
difficulties, the hard work, produced a salutary effect upon him; but
most of all he drew strength and courage from the renewal of love
between Mavis and himself. That was most wonderful--like a new birth,
rather than a reanimation. They loved each other as a freshly married
couple, as a boy and girl who have just returned from their
honeymoon, and who say, "We shall feel just the same when the time
comes to keep our silver wedding."

So he toiled comfortably, almost happily. Mavis was perfectly happy,
and he found increasing solace in the knowledge of this fact.

Thence onward his busy days were free from fear, except for the
transient panics which, as he surmised, he would be subject to for the
remainder of his life. They did not matter, because he could control
them to the extent of preventing the slightest outward manifestation.
All at once while transacting business he would feel the inward
collapse, deadly cold, a sensation that his intestines had been
changed from close-knitted substance to water; and he would think
"This person"--a farmer, a servant, old Mr. Bates, anybody--"suspects
my secret. He guessed it a long while ago. Or he has just discovered
the proofs of guilt." Nevertheless he went on talking in exactly the
same tone of voice, without a contraction of a single facial muscle,
with nothing at all shown unless perhaps a bead of perspiration on his
forehead.

"Good morning, sir. Many thanks, sir.... Yes, Mr. Envill, the stuff
shall be at your stables by one P.M. sharp. I'm making it my pride to
obey all orders punctually, whether big or s