motionless as a statue.

"Yes," she exclaimed at last, with all her courage, "I--I will speak.
I--I'll tell you everything. I will confess, for I cannot bear this
longer. And yet, dearest," she cried, turning her face to me and looking
straight into my eyes, "I love you, though I now know that after I have
spoken--after I have told the truth--you will despise and hate me! Ah,
God alone knows how I have suffered! how I have prayed for deliverance
from this. But it cannot be. I have sinned, I suppose, and I must bear
just punishment."

There was silence.

We all looked at her, though the woman Petre was still lying in her chair
unconscious, and upon the assassin's lips was a grim smile.

"You recollect," Phrida said, turning to me, "you remember the day when
you introduced that man to me. Well, from that hour I knew no peace. He
wrote to me, asking me to meet him, as he had something to tell me
concerning my future. Well, I foolishly met him one afternoon in
Rumpelmeyer's, in St. James's Street, when he told me that he had
purchased a very important German patent for the manufacture of certain
chemicals which would revolutionise prices, and would bring upon your
firm inevitable ruin, as you pursued the old-fashioned methods. But,
being your friend, and respecting us both, he had decided not to go
further with the new process, and though he had given a large sum of
money for it, he would, in our mutual interests, not allow it to be
developed. Naturally, in my innocence I thanked him, and from that
moment, professing great friendliness towards you, we became friends.
Sometimes I met him at the houses of friends, but he always impressed
upon me the necessity of keeping our acquaintance a secret."

And she paused, placing her hand upon her heart as though to stay its
throbbing.

"One afternoon," she resumed, "the day of the tragedy, I received a
telegram urging me to meet him without fail at five o'clock at
Rumpelmeyer's. This I did, when he imparted to me a secret--that you,
dear, were in the habit of meeting, at his flat, a foreign woman named
Marie Bracq, daughter of a hair-dresser in the Edgware Road; that you,
whom I loved, were infatuated with her, and--and that----"

"The liar!" I cried.

"He told me many things which naturally excited me, and which, loving you
as I did, drove me to madness. I refused at first to heed his words, for
somehow I mistrusted him--I know not why! But he offered to give me
proof. If