irl,
but I have seen something of one side of life, at any rate, and the
power does not exist--law or anything else--that shall take you from me.
But, tell me all about it."

"I will, Verna. You remember the first time we came to this spot, and I
was telling you things? I said there was one thing I hadn't told you,
but that I might some day. This was it."

She nodded.

"You remember, too, on that occasion, my saying what a splendid thing it
was to feel quite easy in one's mind, and that I had not always been
able to by any means?"

"Yes."

She was gravely attentive now. Her quick mind, not at ease itself, was
rapidly piecing two and two together; wherefore his next remark caused
her little if any surprise.

"That beastly thing young Stride sprung upon us the other day was an
exact likeness of the man, only, of course, it exaggerated his
villainous expression. He's dead now; but what I suffered at that
blackmailer's hands--good God! Verna; when I think of it I could wish
he might come to life so that I could kill him over again."

Then a new experience came to Verna. This man, so strongly
self-possessed, upon whom an easy dignity sat so well, had suddenly
become a different being. His eyes glowed and his features were set.
He seemed completely to have lost sight of her and her presence for the
time being; to be "reconstituting" the tragedy of horror and revenge.
This was a side of him--a tigerish side--of which she had never dreamed,
but she did not shrink from it, not one atom. She put forth a hand into
his, and the touch calmed him.

"Tell me, Alaric," she said. "Why did you kill him? I dare say he
deserved it. In fact, judging from that villainous-looking face he must
have."

He looked at her in some amazement. The cool, matter-of-fact tones in
which she discussed what to most women would have come as a very
disquieting shock, astonished him a good bit.

"Love," he said in an uneven voice, placing the cool, shapely hands
round his neck and against his face, "I place my life within those dear
hands. I will tell you the whole thing."

Then he told her how the dead man had systematically blackmailed him for
some years past, acting on the knowledge of a former business secret,
which if divulged would not merely have spelt ruin, but worse; a
transaction into which he had been led by others, in the days of his
comparative inexperience. Then he told her of the tragedy on the river
bank in the M