He was drawing her to him and she did not actively resist, though there was no surrender in her attitude.

“And why won’t you have any money?” he said.  “We are partners.”

She laughed lightly.  “And you give me board and lodging.  I am not worth more.”

He looked her in the eyes.  “Are you afraid to take too much—­lest I should want too much in return?”

She did not answer.  She was trembling a little in his hold, but her eyes met his fearlessly.

He put up a hand and took the cigarette very gently from her lips.  “Sylvia, I’m going to tell you something—­if you’ll listen.”

He paused a moment.  She was suddenly throbbing from head to foot.

“What is it?” she whispered.

He snuffed out the cigarette with his fingers and put it in his pocket.  Then he bent to her, his hand upon her shoulder.

His lips were open to speak, and her silence waited for the words, when like the sudden rending of the heavens there came an awful sound close to them, so close that is shook the windows in their frames and even seemed to shake the earth under their feet.

Sylvia started back with a cry, her hands over her face.  “Oh, what—­what—­what is that?”

Burke was at the window in a second.  He wrenched it open, and as he did so there came the shock of a thudding fall.  A man’s figure, huddled up like an empty sack lay across the threshold.  It sank inwards with the opening of the window, and Guy’s face white as death, with staring, senseless eyes, lay upturned to the lamplight.

Something jingled on the floor as his inert form collapsed, and a smoking revolver dropped at Burke’s feet.

He picked it up sharply, uncocked it and laid it on the table.  Then he stooped over the prostrate body.  The limbs were twitching spasmodically, but the movement was wholly involuntary.  The deathlike face testified to that.  And through the grey flannel shirt above the heart a dark stain spread and spread.

“He is dead!” gasped Sylvia at Burke’s shoulder.

“No,” Burke said.

He opened the shirt with the words and exposed the wound beneath.  Sylvia shrank at the sight of the welling blood, but Burke’s voice steadied her.

“Get some handkerchiefs and towels,” he said, “and make a wad!  We must stop this somehow.”

His quietness gave her strength.  Swiftly she moved to do his bidding.

Returning, she found that he had stretched the silent figure full length upon the floor.  The convulsive movements had wholly ceased.  Guy lay like a dead man.

She knelt beside Burke.  “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it!  I’ll do—­anything!”

“All right,” he said.  “Get some cold water!”

She brought it, and he soaked some handkerchiefs and covered the wound.

“I think we shall stop it,” he said.  “Help me to get this thing under his shoulders!  I shall have to tie him up tight.  I’ll lift him while you get it underneath.”