ips--"if you knew me better you'd know that I never _do_--'mean
anything'!"

The bitter intonation in her voice--the gibe at her own poor ruins of
love fallen about her--was lost on him. He was in total ignorance of
her friendship with Quarrington. But the plain significance of her words
came home to him clearly enough. He did not speak for a minute or two.
Then: "You've been playing with me, then--fooling me?" he said heavily.

Magda remained silent. The heavy, laboured speech seemed to hold
something minatory in it--the sullen lowering which precedes a tempest.

"Answer me!" he persisted. "Was that it?"

"I--I suppose it was," she faltered.

He drew still closer and instinctively she shrank away. A consciousness
of repressed violence communicated itself to her. She half expected him
to strike her.

"And you don't love me? You're quite sure?"

There was an ominous kind of patience in the persistent questioning. It
was as though he were deliberately giving her every possible chance to
clear herself. Her nerves frayed a little.

"Of course I'm sure--perfectly sure," she said with nervous asperity. "I
wish you'd believe me, Dan!"

"I only wanted to make sure," he returned.

Something in the careful precision of his answer struck her with a swift
sense of apprehension. She looked up at him and what she saw made her
catch her breath convulsively. His face was ashen, the veins in his
forehead standing out like weals, and his eyes gleamed like blue
flame--mad eyes. His hands, hanging at his sides, twitched curiously.

"I'm sure now," he said. "Sure. . . . Do you know what you've done?
You've smashed up my life. Smashed it. June and I were happy enough till
you came. Now we'll never be happy again. I expect you've smashed other
lives, too. But you won't do it any more. I'm the last. Women like you
are better dead!"

His great arms swung out and gripped her.

"No, don't struggle. It wouldn't be any good, you know." He went on
speaking very carefully and quietly, and while he spoke she felt his
left arm tighten round her, binding her own arms down to her sides as
might a thong, while his right hand slid up to the base of her throat.
She writhed, twisting her body desperately in his grip. "Keep still.
I've kissed you. And now I'm going to kill you. You'll be better dead."

There was implacable purpose in his strangely quiet, unhurried accents.
Magda recognised it--recognised that death was very close to her. It
w