. I cast away all my resolutions of prudence, of
wariness, before that gaze. Seizing her in my arms, I kissed her again
and again.

"I have always suspected--what--what Alresca says," she murmured.

"But you love me?" I cried passionately.

"Do you need to be told, my poor Carl?" she replied, with the most
exquisite melancholy.

"Then I'll defy hell itself!" I said.

She hung passive in my embrace.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE STRUGGLE

When I got back to my little sitting-room at the Hotel de Portugal, I
experienced a certain timid hesitation in opening the door. For
several seconds I stood before it, the key in the lock, afraid to
enter. I wanted to rush out again, to walk the streets all night; it
was raining, but I thought that anything would be preferable to the
inside of my sitting-room. Then I felt that, whatever the cost, I must
go in; and, twisting the key, I pushed heavily at the door, and
entered, touching as I did so the electric switch. In the chair which
stood before the writing-table in the middle of the room sat the
figure of Lord Clarenceux.

Yes, my tormentor was indeed waiting. I had defied him, and we were
about to try a fall. As for me, I may say that my heart sank, sick
with an ineffable fear. The figure did not move as I went in; its back
was towards me. At the other end of the room was the doorway which
led to the small bedroom, little more than an alcove, and the gaze of
the apparition was fixed on this doorway.

I closed the outer door behind me, and locked it, and then I stood
still. In the looking-glass over the mantelpiece I saw a drawn, pale,
agitated face in which all the trouble of the world seemed to reside;
it was my own face. I was alone in the room with the ghost--the ghost
which, jealous of my love for the woman it had loved, meant to revenge
itself by my death.

A ghost, did I say? To look at it, no one would have taken it for an
apparition. No wonder that till the previous evening I had never
suspected it to be other than a man. It was dressed in black; it had
the very aspect of life. I could follow the creases in the frock coat,
the direction of the nap of the silk hat which it wore in my room. How
well by this time I knew that faultless black coat and that impeccable
hat! Yet it seemed that I could not examine them too closely. I
pierced them with the intensity of my fascinated glance. Yes, I
pierced them, for showing faintly through the coat I could discern the
ou