“Oh, I—­I—­took it all in—­I let him p-put the noose around his own neck and tie the knot.  Then I hung him.”  His convulsive giggling was terrible, forecasting, as it did, his immediate breakdown.

“Stephen!” she exclaimed, in a shocked tone, convinced that his mind was going.  “You are ill, you need a doctor.  I will call Joceel.”  She laid her hand on his arm.

But he sniggered:  “N-no!  No!  I’m all right.  I t-t-t-t—­” A stuttering-fit seized him; then, with an effort of will, he calmed himself.  “Don’t think I’m crazy.  I was never more sane, never cooler, in here.”  He tapped his head with his finger.  “But I’m tired, that’s all, tired of waiting.”

“Won’t you go to your room and let me call a doctor?”

“Not yet.  Wait!  He told them what I had done for him, how I’d made a man of him when he was broke and friendless, how I’d taken him into my home like one of my family, and then I went him one better.  I acknowledged it all and made them hear it from my lips too.  Then—­” He paused, and she steeled herself to witness another spectacle of his pitiable loss of self-control.  But instead he grew icy and corpse-like, with lips drawn back in a grin.  “What do you think I said?  Can’t you guess?  I couldn’t let him get away with that, could I?  I played with him the way you have played with me.  Think!”

Her face went suddenly ashen.  He stood before her grimly triumphant, enjoying his sense of mastery and deliberately prolonging her suspense.

“Well, I told him before them all that I intended to give him something in return, and I did.  I—­gave—­him—­you.”

She stared at him uncomprehendingly.

He nodded.  “I said he’d had you from the first and that now I’d give you to him.”

She gave an unintelligible cry, standing now, as if petrified.  He went on: 

“I knew all the time that I was in the way, but my work is done at last, so I’ll step out.  But—­you both got more than you bargained for, didn’t you?”

“God!  You didn’t tell him that?  You didn’t say that—­before those men!  Oh-h!” She shrank back, drawing the gauzy silk robe closer about her breast.  Her hands were shaking, her hair, which had fallen free when she rose, cascaded about her neck and shoulders.  She let her eyes wander about the room as if to assure herself that this was not some hideous nightmare.  Then she roused to sudden action.  Seizing him by the shoulders she shook him roughly with far more than her natural strength, voicing furious words which neither of them understood.

“Oh, I did it,” he declared.  “He’s yours now.  You can have him.  He’s been your lover—­”

She flung him away from her so violently that he nearly fell.

“It’s a lie!  You know it’s a lie!”

“It’s true.  I’m no fool.”

She beat her hands together distractedly, “What have you done?  What will those men think?  Listen!  You must stop them quickly.  Tell them it’s not so.”