"And for me, too! Eliot, I wasn't pretending. I _do_ love you. I
never meant you to know, but last night--I couldn't help it. I'd
promised to marry the--the other man, and then you came, and we were
alone--and--Oh!"--desperately, lifting a wrung face to his. "Why won't
you understand?"

But the beautiful, imploring face failed to move him one jot. Something
had died suddenly within him--the something that was young and eager and
blindly trusting. When she ceased speaking he was only conscious that he
wanted to take her and break her between his two hands--destroy her as
he had destroyed the letter she had written. The blood was drumming in
his temples. His hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically. She was so
slender a thing that it would be very easy ... very easy with those iron
muscles of his.... And then she would be dead. She was so beautiful and so
rotten at the core that she would be better dead....

It was only by a supreme effort that he mastered his overwhelming need
of some physical outlet for the passion of disgust and anger which swept
him bare of any gentler emotion as the incoming tide sweeps the shore
bare of sign or footprint. His body grew taut and rigid with the pressure
he was putting on himself. When at last he spoke his voice was almost
unrecognisable.

"I do understand," he said. "I understand thoroughly. You've
made--everything--perfectly clear."

And with that he turned swiftly, leaving her standing alone in a flickering
patch of shadow, and strode away across the grass. As he went, a little
breeze ran through the garden, wafting the caressing, over-sweet perfume of