e, "I should
consider you rather a morbid person."

"There are times," I answered, "when I feel inclined to agree with you.
To-night is one of them."

"That," she said coolly, "is unfortunate. You have been over-working."

"I am worried by a problem," I told her. "Tell me, are you a great
believer in the sanctity of human life?"

"What a question!" she murmured. "My own life, at any rate, seems to me
to be a terribly important thing."

"Suppose you had a friend," I said, "who was one night attacked in a
quiet spot by a man who sought his life, say, for the purpose of
robbery. Your friend was the stronger and easily defended himself.
Then he saw that his antagonist was a man of ill repute, an evildoer, a
man whose presence upon the earth did good to no one. So he took him by
the throat and deliberately crushed the life out of him. Was your
friend a murderer?"

She smiled at me--that quiet, introspective smile which I knew so well.

"Does the end justify the means? No, of course not. I should have been
very sorry for my friend; but if indeed there is a Creator, it is He
alone who has power to take back what He has given."

"Your friend, then--"

"Don't call him that!"

I rose up and moved towards the door. I think that she saw something in
my face which checked any attempt she might have made to detain me.

"You must forgive me," I said. "I cannot stay."

She said nothing. I looked back at her from the door. Her eyes were
fixed upon me, a little distended, full of mute questioning. I only
shook my head. So I left her and passed out into the night.

CHAPTER XVII

MORE TREACHERY

There followed for me a period of unremitting hard work, days during
which I never left my desk save at such hours when I knew that the
chances of meeting any one scarcely existed. Several times I saw Lady
Angela from my window on the sands below, threading her way across the
marshes to the sea. Once she passed my window very slowly, and with a
quick backward glance as she turned to descend the cliff. But I sat
still with clenched teeth. I had nailed down my resolutions, I had
determined to hold fast to such threads of my common sense as remained.
Only in the night-time, when sleep mocked me and all hope of escape was
futile, was I forced to grapple with this new-born monster of folly. It
drove me up across the Park to where the house, black and lightless,
rose a dark incongruous mass above the trees, down to the sea, where t