“It is all written down,” began Severino, in better voice for the first few drams:  “how I first heard her singing through the open windows in the summer—­only last summer!—­how she heard me playing, and how afterwards we came to meet.  She was unhappy; he was a bad husband; but I only saw it for myself.  He was nice enough to me in his way—­liked to send round for me to play when they had anybody there—­but there was only one reason why I went.  Oh, yes ... the ground she trod on ... the air she breathed!  I make no secret of it now; if I made any then, it was because I knew her too well, and feared to lose what I had got.  And yet—­that brute, that bully, that coarse—­”

He checked himself by an effort that stained his face a sickly brown in the light of the distant candle.  Langholm handed him the tumbler, and a few more drams went down to do the only good—­the temporary good—­that human aid could do for Severino now.  His eyes brightened.  He lay still and silent, collecting strength and self-control.

“I was ill; she brought me flowers.  I never had any constitution—­trust a Latin race for that—­and I became very ill indeed.  With a man like you, a chill at worst; with me, pneumonia in a day.  Then she came to see me herself, saw the doctor, got in all sorts of things, and was coming to nurse me through the night herself.  God bless her for the thought alone!  I was supposed not to know; they thought I was unconscious already.  But I kept conscious on purpose, I could have lived through anything for that alone.  And she never came!

“My landlady sat up instead.  She is another of the kindest women on earth; she thought far more of me than I was ever worth, and it was she who screened me through thick and thin during the delirium that followed, and after that.  She did not tell the whole truth at the trial; may there be no mercy for me hereafter if the law is not merciful to that staunch soul!  She has saved my life—­for this!  But that night—­it was her second in succession—­and she had been with me the whole long day—­that night she fell asleep beside me in the chair.  I can hear her breathing now.

“Dear soul, how it angered me at the time!  It made me fret all the more for—­her.  Why had she broken faith?  I knew that she had not.  Something had kept her; had he?  I had hoped he was out of the way; he left her so much.  He was really on the watch, as you may know.  At last I got up and went to the window.  And all the windows opposite were in darkness except theirs.”

Langholm sprang to his feet, but sat down again as suddenly.

“Go on!”

“What is it that you thought, Langholm?”

“I believe I know what you did.  That’s all.”

“What?  Tell me, please, and then I will tell you.”

“All those garden walls—­they connect.”

“Yes?  Yes?”

“You got through your window, climbed upon your wall, and ran along to the lights.  It occurred to you suddenly; it did to me when I went over the house the other day.”