A gasp—­a pause, during which the thunder spoke and the lightning flashed,—­then a hurried catching of his breath and the tale went on.

“A burst of laughter, rising gaily above the boom of the sea, announced her victory—­her laugh and the taunting words:  ’You play badly, Roger.  The child is mine.  Never fear that I shall fail to teach him to revere his father.’  Had I a word to throw back?  No.  When I realized anything but my dishonoured manhood, I found myself in the grotto’s mouth staring helplessly out upon the sea.  The boat which had floated us in at high tide lay stranded but a few feet away, but I did not reach for it.  Escape was quicker over the rocks, and I made for the rocks.

“That it was a cowardly act to leave her there to find her way back alone at midnight by the same rough road I was taking, did not strike my mind for an instant.  I was in flight from my own past; in flight from myself and the haunting dread of madness.  When I awoke to reality again it was to find the small door, by which we had left the house, standing slightly ajar.  I was troubled by this, for I was sure of having closed it.  But the impression was brief, and entering, I went stumbling up to my room, leaving the way open behind me more from sheer inability to exercise my will than from any thought of her.

“Miss Strange” (he had come out of the shadows and was standing now directly before her), “I must ask you to trust implicitly in what I tell you of my further experiences that fatal night.  It was not necessary for me to pass my little son’s door in order to reach the room I was making for; but anguish took me there and held me glued to the panels for what seemed a long, long time.  When I finally crept away it was to go to the room I had chosen in the top of the house, where I had my hour of hell and faced my desolated future.  Did I hear anything meantime in the halls below?  No.  Did I even listen for the sound of her return?  No.  I was callous to everything, dead to everything but my own misery.  I did not even heed the approach of morning, till suddenly, with a shrillness no ear could ignore, there rose, tearing through the silence of the house, that great scream from my wife’s room which announced the discovery of her body lying stark and cold in her bed.

“They said I showed little feeling.”  He had moved off again and spoke from somewhere in the shadows.  “Do you wonder at this after such a manifest stroke by a benevolent Providence?  My wife being dead, Roger was saved to us!  It was the one song of my still undisciplined soul, and I had to assume coldness lest they should see the greatness of my joy.  A wicked and guilty rejoicing you will say, and you are right.  But I had no memory then of the part I had played in this fatality.  I had forgotten my reckless flight from the grotto, which left her with no aid but that of her own triumphant spirit to help her over those treacherous rocks.  The necessity for keeping secret this part of our disgraceful story led me to exert myself to keep it out of my own mind.  It has only come back to me in all its force since a new horror, a new suspicion, has driven me to review carefully every incident of that awful night.