He had sent his horse back to Ritzen the previous day in the care of a man he knew, so that both their animals would be waiting for them.

“Do you want to get back?” said Burke.

“Oh, yes—­yes!  Anything is better than this.”  She spoke rapidly, almost passionately.  “Let us go!  Do let us go!”

“Very well,” said Burke.  “If you wish it.”

He paused at the door of the office a few minutes later, when they descended, to tell the girl there that they were leaving at noon.

She looked up at him sharply as he stood looking in.  “Heard the latest?” she asked.

“What is the latest?” questioned Burke.

“That dirty dog you thrashed last night—­Kieff; he’s dead,” she told him briefly.  “Killed himself with an overdose of opium, died at Hoffstein’s early this morning.”  She glanced beyond him at Sylvia who stood behind.  “And a good job, too,” she said vindictively.  “He’s ruined more people in this town than I’d like to be responsible for—­the filthy parasite.  He was the curse of the place.”

Burke turned with a movement that was very deliberate.  He also looked at Sylvia.  For a long moment they stood so, in the man’s eyes a growing hardness, in the woman’s a horror undisguised.  Then, with a very curious smile, Burke put his hand through his wife’s arm and turned her towards the room where breakfast awaited them.

“Come and have something to eat, partner!” he said, his voice very level and emotionless.

She went with him without a word; but her whole being throbbed and quivered under his touch as if it were torture to her.  Stark and hideous, the evil thing reared itself in her path, and there was no turning aside.  She saw him, as she had seen him on the night of her arrival, as she had seen him the night after, as she believed that she would always see him for the rest of her life.  And the eyes that looked into hers—­those eyes that had held her, dominated her, charmed her—­were the eyes of a murderer.  Go where she would, there could be no escape for her for ever.  The evil thing had her enchained.

CHAPTER V

THE LAND OF BLASTED HOPES

They were still at breakfast when Kelly came dashing in full of the news of the death of Kieff.  No one knew whether it had been accidental or intentional, but he spoke—­as the girl in the office had spoken—­as if a curse had been lifted from the town.  And Sylvia sat at the table and listened, feeling as if her heart had been turned to ice.  The man had died by his own hand, but she could not shake from her the feeling that she and Burke had been the cause of his death.

She saw Kelly for a few minutes alone when the meal was over, and whispered her thanks to him for what he had done with regard to Guy.  He would scarcely listen to her, declaring it had been a pleasure to serve her, that it had been the easiest thing in the world, and that now it was done she must not worry any more.