ng go his hands and
standing rigid.

Old Foster ran in again, calling, "Are you ready, sir?" He found his
answer. Alexander Quisante would speak no more in Henstead. He was
leaning against Marchmont, breathing heavily and with sore difficulty.
May went to him; she was very white and very calm; she took his hand and
kissed it.

"I--I--I spoke well?" he muttered. "Didn't I?"

"Very very finely, Alexander."

"They were--were all wrong in saying I couldn't do it," he murmured. He
shivered again and then was still. The Dean had brought a chair and they
put him in it. But he moved no more. May looked at old Foster who stood
by, his face wrung with helpless distress and consternation.

"We've killed him among us, I and you and the people out there," she said.

CHAPTER XXI.

A RELICT.

"Yes, I asked her," said Weston Marchmont, "but--Well, I don't think
she'd mind you reading her letter, and I should rather like you to." He
flung it across the table to Dick Benyon. "I half see what she means,"
said he, lighting a cigarette.

Dick took the letter with an impatient frown. "I don't," he said, as he
settled himself to read it.

"My dear Friend, I have thought it over, many times, in many
different moods, and in all of them I have always wanted to do what
you ask. Not for your sake, not because you ask me, but for my own.
I think I should be very happy, and as you know I have never yet
been very happy. I wasn't while my husband was alive. Imagine my
finding side by side in his desk the doctor's letter saying it was
certain death to go to Henstead and that report of Professor
Maturin's which he suppressed and told me had been destroyed. That
brought him back to me just as he was. With you I think I should be
happy. I should never be afraid, I should never be ashamed. What
fear and what shame I used to feel! I write very openly to you about
myself and about him; if I were answering as you wish, I would not
say a word against him. But I can't. That's just the feeling. You
tell me I am free, that two years have gone by, that I might find a
new life for myself, that you love me. I know it all, but except the
last none of it sounds true. You know that once I thought about
being free and that then you were in my thoughts. Who should be, if
you were not? Except him and you I have never though