n.' And in
those days, dear boy, we did not use shoe-blacking. Pray calm yourself,
and sit down. You are upsetting the internal arrangements of your
Infant. If you swing a baby violently about, it makes it sick. Any old
Gamp will tell you that."

Ronnie sat down; but solely because his knees suddenly gave way beneath
him. The floor on which he was standing seemed to become deep sand.

"Keep calm," sneered Aubrey Treherne. "Perhaps you would like to know my
excellent warrant for concluding that Helen was my wife in a former
life? She came very near to being my wife in this. She was engaged to me
before she ever met you, my boy. Had it not been for the interference of
that strong-minded shrew, Mrs. Dalmain, she would have married me. I had
kissed my cousin Helen, as much as I pleased, before you had ever
touched her hand."

The incandescent lights grew blood-red, leaping up and down, in wild,
bewildering frolic.

Then they steadied suddenly. Helen's calm, lovely figure, in a shaft of
sunlight, reappeared in the empty chair.

Ronnie handed the Infant to her; rose, staggered across the intervening
space, and struck Aubrey Treherne a violent blow on the mouth.

Aubrey gripped his arms, and for a moment the two men glared at one
another.

Then Ronnie's knees gave way again; his feet sank deeply into the sand;
and Aubrey, forcing him violently backward, pinned him down in his
chair.

"I would kill you for this," he whispered, his face very close to
Ronnie's; blood streaming from his lip. "I would kill you for this, you
clown! But I mean to kiss Helen again; and life, while it holds that
prospect, is too sweet to risk losing for the mere pleasure of wiping
you out. Otherwise, I would kill you now, with my two hands."

Then a black pulsating curtain rolled, in impenetrable folds,
between Ronnie and that livid bleeding face, and he sank
away--down--down--down--into silent depths of darkness and of solitude.

CHAPTER VI

AUBREY PUTS DOWN HIS FOOT

Ronnie's first sensation as he returned to consciousness, was of extreme
lassitude and exhaustion.

His eyelids lifted heavily; he had some difficulty in realising where he
was.

Then he saw his 'cello, leaning against a chair; and, a moment later,
Aubrey Treherne, lying back in the seat opposite, enveloped in a cloud
of tobacco smoke.

"Hullo, West!" said Aubrey, kindly. "You put in your half-hour quite
unexpectedly. You were trying, in a sleepy fashion, to