“Perhaps not, but while you robbed he slept.  I was as gentle as you and quieter, but in the midst of it he woke up, and I found his eyes wide open, watching me.  I saw his fingers stiffen—­in a moment he would have been upon me—­so I struck him down.  You heard him call and came back.  Yet we neither of us thought him dead.  I did not wish to kill him.  Do you remember how we stood side by side and shuddered?

“Don’t!” Douglas cried sharply.  “Don’t.  I wish you would go away.”

The man in the chair took no notice.  There was a retrospective light in his dark eyes.  He tapped upon the table again with his skinny forefinger.

“Just a little blue mark upon his temple,” he continued, in the same hard, emotionless voice.  “We stood and looked at it, you and I. It was close upon morning then, you know—­it seemed to grow light as we stood there, didn’t it?  You tried to bring him to.  I knew that it was no use.  I knew then that he was dead.”

Douglas reeled where he stood, and every atom of colour had left his cheeks.

“I wish you would go away, or be silent,” he moaned.  “You will send me mad—­as you are.”

Then the man in the chair smiled, and awful though his impassiveness had been, that smile was worse.

“It is not I who will send you mad,” he said.  “She will do it in good time.  She has done it to others—­she has done it to me.  That is why I tried to kill her.  That is why I may not rest until I have killed her.  Don’t you know why I wanted that money?  She was at the Priory, and I walked there, to see her for a moment, to hear her voice.  I hid in the grounds—­it was two days before I saw her.  Then she shrank away from me as though I were some unclean animal.  She would not look at me, nor suffer me to speak.  I had no right, she said, to come into her presence in such a state.  I was to come decently dressed, in my right mind—­then she might talk with me.  But a creature in rags!  It wasn’t kind, was it?  I had waited so long, and I was what she had made me.  So I went across the hills to Feldwick, and I wrote a note to my father.  He tore it into small pieces unread.  So I came by night, a thief, and you also were there by night, a thief.  The same night, too.  It was queer.

“I do not want to hear any more,” Douglas said, with a shiver.  “I thought that you were dead.”

“I have an excellent recipe for immortality,” was the slow, bitter answer.  “I desire to die.”

“There are your sisters,” Douglas said slowly.  “They are in London.  After all, you did not mean to kill him.”

The man shook his head.

“I have no sisters,” he said, “nor any kin.”

“Why not Africa, and a fresh start?” Douglas said.  “I am poor, but I can help you, and I can borrow a bit—­enough for your passage and clothes, at any rate.”

No thanks—­no sign even of having heard.  The man had moved to the window.  He seemed fascinated by the view.  There was a silence between them.  Then he waved his hand towards that red glow which hung like a mist of fire over the city.