At midnight he came up the stairs and unlocked her door.  He entered, closing the door behind him, and stood looking at her.  His face was so strange that she wondered if he had decided to do away with her.

“To-morrow,” he said, in an inflectionless voice, “you will be moved by automobile to a farm I have selected in the country.  You will take only such small luggage as the car can carry.”

“Is Olga going with me?”

“No.  Olga is needed here.”

“I suppose I am to understand from this that Louis has been defeated and there is no longer any reason for delay in your plans.”

“You can understand what you like.”

“Am I to know where I am going?”

“You will find that out when you get there.  I will tell you this:  It is a lonely place, without a telephone.  You’ll be cut off from your family, I am afraid.”

She gazed at him.  It seemed unbelievable to her that she had once lain in this man’s arms.

“Why don’t you kill me, Jim?  I know you’ve thought about it.”

“Yes, I’ve thought of it.  But killing is a confession of fear, my dear.  I am not afraid of you.”

“I think you are.  You are afraid now to tell me when you are going to try to put this wild plan into execution.”

He smiled at her with mocking eyes.

“Yes,” he agreed again.  “I am afraid.  You have a sort of diabolical ingenuity, not intelligence so much as cunning.  But because I always do the thing I’m afraid to do, I’ll tell you.  Of course, if you succeed in passing it on—­” He shrugged his shoulders.  “Very well, then.  With your usual logic of deduction, you have guessed correctly.  Louis Akers has been defeated.  Your family—­and how strangely you are a Cardew!—­lost its courage at the last moment, and a gentleman named Hendricks is now setting up imitation beer and cheap cigars to his friends.”

Behind his mocking voice she knew the real fury of the man, kept carefully in control by his iron will.

“As you have also correctly surmised,” he went on, “there is now nothing to be gained by any delay.  A very few days, three or four, and—­” His voice grew hard and terrible—­“the first stone in the foundation of this capitalistic government will go.  Inevitable law, inevitable retribution—­” His voice trailed off.  He turned like a man asleep and went toward the door.  There he stopped and faced her.

“I’ve told you,” he said darkly.  “I am not afraid of you.  You can no more stop this thing than you can stop living by ceasing to breathe.  It has come.”

She heard him in his room for some time after that, and she surmised from the way he moved, from closet to bed and back again, that he was packing a bag.  At two o’clock she heard Olga coming in; the girl was singing in Russian, and Elinor had a sickening conviction that she had been drinking.  She heard Doyle send her off to bed, his voice angry and disgusted, and resume his packing, and ten minutes later she heard a car draw up on the street, and knew that he was off, to begin the mobilization of his heterogeneous forces.