g--to
disprove my statement that Dalton's death was provoked. I hold the key
to that--I alone. That being true, I couldn't be prosecuted in Pursuit
as 'accessory after the fact.'"

"Yes," he agreed. "That's true."

"And here," she concluded, without a hint of triumph, even without a
special show of interest, "I can't be proceeded against for blackmail.
That money, from both of them, was a gift. I hadn't asked for it, much
less demanded it. I," she said with an assured arrogance, "hadn't got
that far.--So, you see, Mr. Hastings, I'm far from frightened."

He found nothing to say to that shameless but unassailable declaration.
Also, he was aware that she entertained, and sought solution of, a
problem, the question of how best to satisfy her implacable
determination to make the man pay. That purpose occupied all her mind,
now that her money greed was frustrated.

It was on this that he had calculated. It explained his going to her
before confronting the murderer. He had felt certain that her perverted
desire to "get even" would force her into the strange position of
helping him.

He broke the silence with a careful attempt to guide her thoughts:

"But don't fool yourself, Mrs. Brace. You've got out of this all you'll
ever get, financially--every cent. And you're in an unpleasant
situation--an outcast, perhaps. People don't stand for your line of
stuff, your behaviour."

She did not resent that. Making a desperate mental search for the best
way to serve her hard self-interest, he thought, she was impervious to
insult.

"I know," she said, to his immense relief. "I've been considering the
only remaining point."

"What's that?"

"The sure way to make him suffer as horribly as possible."

He pretended absorption in his carving.

"Why shouldn't he have provided me with money when I asked it?" she
demanded, at last.

The new quality of her speech brought his head up with a jerk. Instead
of colourless harshness, it had a warm fury. It was not that she spoke
loudly or on a high key; but it had an unbridled, self-indulgent sound.
He got the impression that she put off all censorship from either her
feeling or her expression.

"That wasn't much to ask--as long as he continued his life of ease, of
luxury, of safety--as long as I left out of consideration the debt he
couldn't pay, the debt that was impossible of payment."

Alien as the thing seemed in connection with her, he grasped it. She
thought that she had on