gesture.

"We will not discuss your wi--Mrs. Adams," he protested. "Where is John
Poindexter?"

"At the hotel," I rejoined. "Or possibly he has returned home. I no
longer take account of his existence. Felix, I shall never leave my
wife. I had rather prove recreant to the oath I took before I realized
the worth of the woman whose happiness I vowed to destroy. This is what
I have come to tell you. Make it easy for me, Felix. You are a man who
has loved and suffered. Let us bury the past; let us----"

Had I hoped I could move him? Perhaps some such child's notion had
influenced me up to this moment. But as these words left my lips, nay,
before I had stumbled through them, I perceived by the set look of his
features, which were as if cast in bronze, that I might falter, but that
he was firm as ever, firmer, it seemed to me, and less easy to be
entreated.

Yet what of that? At the worst, what had I to fear? A struggle which
might involve Eva in bitter unpleasantness and me in the loss of a
fortune I had come to regard almost as my own. But these were petty
considerations. Eva must know sooner or later my real name and the story
of her father's guilt. Why not now? And if we must start life poor, it
was yet life, while a separation from her----

Meanwhile Felix had spoken, and in language I was least prepared to
hear.

"I anticipated this. From the moment you pleaded with me for the
privilege of marrying her, I have looked forward to this outcome and
provided against it. Weakness on the part of her bridegroom was to be
expected; I have, therefore, steeled myself to meet the emergency; for
your oath must be kept!"

Crushed by the tone in which these words were uttered, a tone that
evinced power against which any ordinary struggle would end in failure,
I cast my eyes about the room in imitation of what I had seen him do a
few minutes before. There was nothing within sight calculated to awaken
distrust, and yet a feeling of distrust (the first I had really felt)
had come with the look he had thrown above and around the mosque-like
interior of the room he called his study. Was it the calm confidence he
showed, or the weirdness of finding myself amid Oriental splendors and
under the influence of night effects in high day and within sound of the
clanging street cars and all the accompanying bustle of every-day
traffic? It is hard to say; but from this moment on I found myself
affected by a vague affright, not on my own ac