whether you go to the devil or not. The only thing that concerns me is
how to protect a woman's honour that you have dared to jeopardize, how
to save her from open shame. It won't be an easy matter, but it can be
done, and it shall be done. Now listen!" His voice rang suddenly hard,
almost metallic. "If this thing is to be kept from her--as it must
be--as it shall be--you must drop out--vanish. So far as she is
concerned you must die to-night."

"I?" Dacre stared at him in startled incredulity. "Man, are you mad?"

"I am not." Keen as bared steel came the answer. Monck's impassivity was
gone. His face was darkly passionate, his whole bearing that of a man
relentlessly set upon obtaining the mastery. "But if you imagine her
safety can be secured without a sacrifice, you are wrong. Do you think I
am going to stand tamely by and see an innocent woman dragged down to
your beastly level? What do you suppose her point of view would be? How
would she treat the situation if she ever came to know? I believe she
would kill herself."

"But she never need know! She never shall know!" There was a note of
desperation in Dacre's rejoinder. "You have only got to hush it up, and
it will die a natural death. That she-devil will never take the trouble
to follow me out here. Why should she? She knows very well that she has
no claim whatever upon me. Stella is the only woman who has any claim
upon me now."

"You are right." Grimly Monck took him up. "And her claim is the claim
of an honourable woman to honourable treatment. And so far as lies in
your power and mine, she shall have it. That is why you will do this
thing--disappear to-night, go out of her life for good, and let her