ands as
Quinton Edge reached her side, but he crushed her into his arms and
kissed her on the lips. They walked slowly along the terrace, turned the
corner of the eastern portico, and disappeared. Constans, running up,
was just an instant too late; he heard Quinton Edge calling the dog
inside, then the sound of the closing door.

By a supreme exercise of will Constans stopped short of the insanity
that impelled him to thunder on the barrier and demand admittance. Yet
he must gain instant entrance to the house, and he ran around the
terrace to the river portico. As he had expected, the hall-door was
fastened, but he had no difficulty in forcing one of the long windows of
the drawing-room; he stepped into the dark and empty room and stood
listening.

There was perfect silence everywhere, but he could not trust to it--eyes
and ears might be in waiting at every turn, and, above all, there was
the dog. He wondered that the hound had not already detected his
presence in the house, and his pulse thumped at the thought; he fancied
that he could hear deep breathing and the oncoming of padded feet.

The minutes passed, and the silence remained unbroken. Then the sense of
his cowardice smote him; the jaws of the brute would be preferable to
this intolerable inaction, and he went forward through the half-opened
door and into the main hall.

This, too, was empty, and, having windows that faced the west, it was
sufficiently well lighted by the conflagration to make the fact of its
desertion certain. And Constans owed it to the friendly flames that he
was once more provided with a weapon. There was a rapier hanging upon
the wall, slender and yet strong, of very ancient make; in an instant he
had it down and was trying the temper of its blade upon the hearthstone.

The touch of the cold steel was like a tonic; heart and blood responded
immediately. Its discovery had been a fortunate chance, for again the
illumination in the west died down the final pianissimo before the full
crash of the orchestra--and the darkness returned deeper than before.

Constans, with the rapier held shortened in his hand, found his way to
the staircase and began the ascent. At the turn of the second landing he
stopped, feeling instinctively that there was something in the way. When
he could bear no longer to wait and listen, he put his hand down and
felt beneath it the smooth, hairy coat of the hound's body. The dog was
quite dead, and lying in a pool of