“Yes,” he nodded.  “Yes—­she killed him.”

Mrs. Marteen sank slowly back upon her pillows and lay with closed eyes.  A heavy pulse beat in the arteries at her throat, and a scarlet spot burned on either cheek.

“Nemesis,” she murmured.  “Nemesis.”  She lay still for a moment.  “Thank God!” she said at length, and let her hands fall relaxed upon the counterpane.  She seemed as if asleep but for the quick intake of her breath.

Gard gazed upon her with infinite tenderness, yet with sudden bitter consciousness of the isolation of each individual soul.  She was remote, withdrawn.  Even his eager sympathy could not reach the depths of her self-tortured heart.  But now at last he knew her, a completed being.  The soul was there, palpitant, awake.  The something he had so sorely missed was the living and real presence of spirit.  It came over him in a wave of realization that he, too, had been unconscious of his own higher self until his love had made him feel the need of it in her.  They two, from the depths of self-satisfied power, had gone blindly in their paths of self-seeking—­till each had awakened the other.  A strange, retarded spiritual birth.

He looked back over his long career of remorseless success with something of the self-horror he had read in her eyes as he had placed the incriminating papers in her frail hands.  And as she had cast contamination from her, so he promised himself he would thrust predatory greed from his own life.  They were both born anew.  They would both be true to their own souls.

* * * * *

XVI

The softened electric light suffused a glamour of glowing color over the rich brocade of the walls of Marcus Gard’s library, catching a glint here and there on iridescent plaques, or a mellow high light on the luscious patine of an antique bronze.  The stillness, so characteristic of the place, seemed to isolate it from the whole world, save when a distant bell musically announced the hour.

Brencherly sat facing his employer, respecting his anxious silence, while they waited the coming of the district attorney, to whose clemency they must appeal—­surely common humanity would counsel protective measures, secrecy, in the proceeding of the law.  The links in the chain of evidence were now complete, but more than diplomacy would be required in order to bring about the legal closing of the affair without precipitating a scandal.  Gard’s own hasty actions led back to his fear for Mrs. Marteen, that in turn involved the cause of that suspicion.  To convince the newsmongers that the crime was one of an almost accidental nature, he felt would be easy.  An escaped lunatic had committed the murder.  That revenge lay behind the insane act would be hidden.  If necessary, the authorities of the asylum could be silenced with a golden gag—­but the law?

Neither of the two men, waiting in the silent house, underestimated the importance of the coming interview.