Ethel had half-forgotten the wrong she herself had suffered at his
hands. He could not be measured by ordinary standards, this dazzling
madman, whose diseased will-power had assumed such uncanny proportions.
But here a young life was at stake. In her mind's eye she saw Reginald
crush between his relentless hands the delicate soul of Ernest Fielding,
as a magnificent carnivorous flower might close its glorious petals upon
a fly.

Love, all conquering love, welled up in her. She would fight for Ernest
as a tiger cat fights for its young. She would place herself in the way
of the awful force that had shattered her own aspirations, and save, at
any cost, the brilliant boy who did not love her.




XXII


The last rays of the late afternoon sun fell slanting through Ernest's
window. He was lying on his couch, in a leaden, death-like slumber that,
for the moment at least, was not even perturbed by the presence of
Reginald Clarke.

The latter was standing at the boy's bedside, calm, unmoved as ever. The
excitement of his conversation with Ethel had left no trace on the
chiselled contour of his forehead. Smilingly fastening an orchid of an
indefinable purple tint in his evening coat, radiant, buoyant with life,
he looked down upon the sleeper. Then he passed his hand over Ernest's