“I see.”

“If you don’t mind,” she added, “I think I can make you understand it all the better, if you’ll let me go back to the beginning.  I’ll make it as short as I can.”

“Yes.”

“I had been brought up in New York, except when we were in Europe or when I was away at school.  My father and mother never let me see or know anything of real life.  Dad was old, even as far back as I can remember.  Mother was his second wife.  Milo’s mother was his first wife, and she died ever so long ago.  Milo is twenty years older than I am.  Milo came down here on a cruise, when he got out of college.  And he fell in love with this part of the country.  He persuaded Dad to buy him a farm here, and he has spent fifteen years in building it up to what it is now.  He and my mother didn’t didn’t get on awfully well together.  So Milo spent about all his time down here, and I hardly ever saw him.  Then Dad and Mother died, within a day of each other, during the flu epidemic.  And Milo came on, for the funeral, of course, and to wind up the estate.  Then he wanted me to come down here and live with him.  He said he was lonely.  And I was still lonelier.

“I came here.  And I’ve been here ever since.  It is a part of the world that throws a charm around every one who stays long enough under its spell.  And I grew to loving it as much as Milo did.  We had a beautiful life here, he and I and the cordial, lovable people who became our friends.  It was last spring that Rodney Hade came to see us.  Milo had known him, slightly, down here, years ago.  He came back here—­nobody knows from where, and rented a house, the other side of Coconut Grove, and brought his yacht down to Miami Harbor.  Almost right away, he seemed to gain the queerest influence over Milo.  It was almost like hypnotism.  And yet, I don’t altogether wonder.  He has an odd sort of fascination about him.  Even when he is discussing his snakes.”

“His snakes?”

“He has three rooms in his house fitted up as a reptile zoo.  He collects them from everywhere.  He says—­and he seems to believe it—­that they won’t hurt him and that he can handle them as safely as if they were kittens.  Just like that man they used to have in the post office up at Orlando, who used to sit with his arms full of rattlesnakes and moccasins, and pet them.”

“Yes,” said Gavin, absentmindedly, as he struggled against an almost overmastering impulse which was gripping him.  “I remember.  But at last one of his pets killed him.  He—­”

“How did you know?” she asked, surprised.  “How in the world should a newcomer from the North know about—­”

“Oh, I read it in a Florida dispatch to one of the New York papers,” he said, impatient at his own blunder.  “And it was such a strange story it stuck in my memory.  It—­”

“Well,” resumed Claire, “I think I’ve made you understand the simple and natural things that led up to it all.  And now, I’ll tell you everything, at least everything I know about it.  It’s—­it’s a gruesome sort of story, and—­and I’ve grown to hate it all so!” She quivered.  Then, squaring her young shoulders again, she continued: