“I think he’s all right now,” Gladys replied, “but he has suffered frightfully.  Indeed, we’ve all had a terrible time,” And she told him what had happened.

“Then you’ve not been acting at the Imperial lately?” Shiel asked.

“Not for the past week,” Gladys replied.  “I couldn’t leave father.”

“How has Mr. Bromley Burnham got on without you?” Shiel asked bitterly.

“I don’t understand you,” Gladys said quietly.  “I have an understudy, and from what I am told she has given every satisfaction.  I have some news which I fear won’t be altogether welcome to you.”

Shiel turned a shade paler.  “What is it?” he faltered.

“I’m engaged to be married.”

For a few moments there was silence, and then Shiel exclaimed mechanically “Engaged to be married!  To whom?”

“To Leon Hamar!  I couldn’t help it.”  And she explained the position.

“But he’ll never keep you to it,” Shiel said.  “He couldn’t be such a brute.”

“I’m afraid he will,” Gladys replied.  “He’s shown pretty clearly that he’s capable of anything.  I’ve given him my promise—­I must keep it.”

“Then it’s good-bye to all interest in life—­for me,” Shiel said, with a gulp.  “I’ve thought of no one but you since we first met.  For you—­in the hope of someday winning you, I’ve struggled on; I’ve reconciled myself to a bare existence.  Now I’ve lost you, I’ve lost everything.  I hate life.  I shall—­”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Gladys interrupted, “unless you want me to regret ever having met you.  I wonder that you say ’I’ve nothing to live for’—­when we can still be friends; and when you can, at least, win my respect, by putting your shoulder to the wheel, and exerting yourself to the utmost to get on.”

“And you—­what about you?”

“Never mind me—­I can well look after myself.”

“You’ll live in Hell,” Shiel cried, her eyes goading him to madness.  “Even though you may not care for me, I do not choose to stand quietly by, whilst you spend your life in Purgatory.  Hamar has won you through some diabolical trickery, and if I can’t thwart him in any other way—­I’ll kill him.  He shan’t marry you.”

“He will,” Gladys sighed.  “No one can stop him.  He is omnipotent.”

Apparently, Gladys’s statement was more or less true; and ninety-nine men out of a hundred, in the same circumstances as Shiel, would have now recognized the hopelessness of the situation.  But Shiel was abnormal.  As he walked home from the Cottage that evening he kept on repeating to himself “Gladys is my goal.  I want only Gladys.  I’ll have only Gladys.”  And having once made up his mind to get Gladys, it seemed to him, as if out of every obstacle, that lay between him and Gladys, he could and would merely make a stepping-stone.  “Since,” he argued to himself, “all’s fair in love and war, I’ll win Gladys through another woman.”

And he straightway telephoned to Lilian Rosenberg to have tea with him.