to her you have done to me! What you and your conscience and your
cruelty and your attorneys did to her twenty-four years ago, you
have done this day to me! As surely as you outlawed her, so have
you outlawed me to-day. That is what I now am, an outlaw!"

"It was insulted civilisation that punished, not I, Berkley----"

"It was you! You took your shrinking pound of flesh. I know your
sort. Hell is full of them singing psalms!"

Colonel Arran sat silently stern a moment. Then the congested
muscles, habituated to control, relaxed again. He said, under
perfect self-command:

"You'd better know the truth. It is too late now to discuss whose
fault it was that the trouble arose between your mother and me. We
lived together only a few weeks. She was in love with her cousin;
she didn't realise it until she'd married me. I have nothing more
to say on that score; she tried to be faithful, I believe she was;
but he was a scoundrel. And she ended by thinking me one.

"Even before I married her I was made painfully aware that our
dispositions and temperaments were not entirely compatible. I
think," he added grimly, "that in the letters read to you this
afternoon she used the expression, 'ice and fire,' in referring to
herself and me."

Berkley only looked at him.

"There is now nothing to be gained in reviewing that unhappy