Suzee looked terror-stricken.

“Send me away!  But what could I do?  Where could I go?”

“Where you pleased!  You would not live any more with me.”

“Well, Treevor, I will not do it any more,” she answered, her eyes fixed on the jewels.  “Do let me have the necklace.  May I put it on?”

And she stretched out her hand to grasp it from the table where I had laid it.  Her avarice, her lack of any real deep feeling about the matter, filled me with irrepressible anger.

I sprang to my feet and snatched the necklet up, case and all, and flung it through the window.

“No, you shall certainly not have it,” I exclaimed.

Suzee gave a shriek of pain and dismay as she saw the beloved jewels flash through the air and disappear in the darkness, and rushed to the window as if she would jump after them.

Fearing she might call to the passers-by below and create a disturbance, I took her by the shoulder and pulled her back into the room.

Then I shut the window and bolted it above her head.

I walked over to the door of the room.

“You had better go to bed,” I said; “do not wait for me, I shall sleep elsewhere.”

Then I went out and locked the door behind me, putting the key in my pocket.

I went down the passage slowly.  My heart was beating fast and I felt angry, but the anger was not that deep fierce agony of emotion I had felt at times when Viola angered or grieved me.

It was more a superficial sensation of disgust and repulsion that filled me, and, after a few minutes, I grew calm and recovered my self-possession.

“What could I expect from a girl like this?” I asked myself.  “What could I expect but lies and deceit and trickery and infidelity?  She had shewn me all these at Sitka when I first met her.”

I had been willing enough to profit by them, but even then they had disgusted me.  Now I was in the position of Hop Lee, and as she had treated him so would she treat me.  It was true she professed to love me, and did so in her way.  But it was the way of the woman who is bought and sold.

And why should I feel specially repelled because I had found her with a servant?  Had she not come from a tea-shop in Sitka, where she herself was serving?

The Mexican boy was handsome enough.  Doubtless he presented a temptation to her.

It was all my own fault, everything that had happened or would happen, for choosing such an unsuitable companion.  The light loves of an hour with painted butterflies such as Suzee are well enough, but for life together one must seek and find one’s equal, one who sees with the same eyes, who has the same standard as one’s own of the fitness of things, in whose veins runs blood of the same quality as one’s own.

Why had Viola left me?  The thought came with a pang of anguish as my heart called out for her.

The corridor was a lofty one of stone.  It was quite empty now and unlighted.  I walked on slowly in the dark till I came to a large window on my right hand.  This window overlooked a wide expanse of lead roofs belonging to the lower stories of the hotel, and these commanded a magnificent view of the whole city.