Stella gazed at the man with fascinated eyes. The confidence with which
he spoke somehow left no room for question.

"He is mad," she murmured, half to herself and half to Peter. "Of course
he is mad."

And then, as if a hand had touched her also, she moved forward to the
edge of the precipice and looked down.

The rush of the torrent rose up like the tumult of many voices calling
to her, calling to her. The depth beneath her feet widened to an abyss
that yawned to engulf her. With a sick sense of horror she realized that
ghastly, headlong fall--from warm, throbbing life on the enchanted
height to instant and terrible destruction upon the green, slimy
boulders over which the water dashed and roared continuously far below.
Here he had sat, that arrogant lover of hers, and slipped from somnolent
enjoyment into that dreadful gulf. At her feet--proof indisputable of
the truth of the story she had been told--lay a charred fragment of the
cigar that had doubtless been between his lips when he had sunk into
that fatal sleep. The memory of Peter's words flashed through her brain.
He had smoked opium. She wondered if Peter really knew. But of what
avail now to conjecture? He was gone, and only this mad native vagabond
had witnessed his going.

And at that, another thought pierced her keen as a dagger, rending its
way through living tissues. The manner of the man's appearing, the
horror with which he had inspired her, the mystery of him, all combined
to drive it home to her heart. What if a hand had indeed touched him?
What if a treacherous blow had hurled him over that terrible edge?