e fell ill--dreadful attacks of
heart--and one night he had a terrible attack and I held back the
medicine that would have saved him. I saw his eyes watching me, pleading
for it. I stood and waited . . . he died."

She stopped for a moment--then her words came more slowly: "It was a
very little thing--it was not a very bad thing--he was a wicked
man . . . but God has punished me and He will punish me until I die. All
these years He has pursued me, urging me to confess--I have fought and
struggled against it, but at last He has beaten me--He has driven me.
. . . Oh! the relief! the relief!"

She looked at him curiously.

"If you did not know, why did I feel that you understood and
sympathized? Have you no horror of me now?"

For answer, he bent and kissed her cheek.

"I too am very lonely. I too know what God can do."

Then she clung to him as though she would never let him leave her.

CHAPTER XIV

GOD

1

Half an hour later he was in his room again, and the real world had come
back to him. It had come back with the surprise of some supernatural
mechanism; it was as though the sofa, chairs, pictures had five minutes
before been grass and toadstools in a world of mist and now were sofa,
chairs and pictures again.

He was absolutely sane, whereas half an hour ago he had been held almost
by an enchantment. If Margaret were here with him now, here in his
room--not in that dim, horrible Rocket Road house, raised it might
almost seem by the superstitions and mists of his own conscience--ah!
how he would love her!

He was filled with a sense of energy and enterprise. He would have it
out with Rupert, laugh away his suspicions, reconcile him to the idea of
the marriage, finally drag Margaret from that horrible house. As with a
man who has furious attacks of neuralgia, and between the agony of them
feels, so great is the relief, that no pain will ever come to him again,
so Olva was now, for an instant, the Olva of a month ago.

Four times had the Pursuer thus given him respite--on the morning after
the murder, in St. Martin's Chapel on that same evening, after his
confession to Bunning, and now. But Aegidius, looking down from his
wall, saw the strong, stern face of his young friend and loved him and
knew that, at last, the pursuit was at an end. . . .

Bunning came in.

2

Bunning came in. The little silver clock had just struck a quarter to
one. The match was at half-past two.

Olva knew at his fir