“So that it doesn’t matter what I thought about—­that promise?”

“Not in the least.”  She had saved herself.  “The one thing important to me is that you should have made it.”

“And that you can hold me to it,” he added, tersely.

“I presume I can do that?”

“You can, unless—­unless I find myself in a position to take the promise back.”

“I can hardly see how that position could come about,” she said, with an air of wondering.

“I can.  You see,” he went on in an explanatory tone, “it was an unusual sort of promise—­a promise made, so to speak, for value received—­for unusual value received.  It wasn’t one that a common occasion would have called forth.  It was offered because you had given me—­life.”

He rested his arm now on a table that stood between them and, leaning toward her, looked her steadily in the eyes.

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re going to say,” she remarked, rather blankly.

“No, but you’ll see.  You gave me life.  I hold that life in a certain sense at your pleasure.  It is at your disposal.  It must remain at your disposal—–­ until I give it back.”

She sat upright in her chair, leaning in her turn on the table, and drawing nearer to him.

“I can’t imagine what you mean,” she said, under her breath and looking a little frightened.

“You’ll see presently.  But don’t be alarmed.  It’s going to be all right.  As long as I hold the life you gave me,” he continued to explain, “I must do your bidding.  I’m not a free man; I’m—­don’t be offended—­I’m your creature.  I don’t say I was a free man before this came up.  I haven’t been a free man ever since I’ve been Herbert Strange.  I’ve been the slave of a sort of make-believe.  I’ve made believe, and I’ve felt I was justified.  Perhaps I was.  I’m not quite sure.  But I haven’t liked it; and now I begin to feel that I can’t stand it any longer.  You follow me, don’t you?”

She nodded, still leaning toward him across the table, and not taking her eyes from his.  He remembered afterward though he paid no heed to it at the time, how those eyes grew wide with awe and flashed with strange, lambent brightness.

“I told you a few days ago,” he pursued, “that there were times when it was hell.  That was putting it mildly—­too mildly.  There’s been no time when it wasn’t hell—­in here.”  He tapped his forehead.  “I’ve struggled, and fought, and pushed, and swaggered, and bluffed, and had ups and downs, and taken heart, and swaggered and bluffed again, and lied all through—­and I’ve made Herbert Strange a respectable man of business on the high road to success.  But when I come near you it all goes to pieces—­like one of those curiously conserved dead bodies when they’re brought to the air.  There’s nothing to them.  There’s nothing to me—­so long as I’m Herbert Strange.”

“But you are Herbert Strange.  You can’t help yourself—­now.”