heless, the man rose with a little cry and advanced, half
crouching, towards me. "YOU are not hunting me down--with the police?"
he exclaimed, his neck held low and his forehead wrinkling.

The voice--the voice was Le Geyt's. It was an unspeakable mystery.
"Hugo," I cried, "dear Hugo--hunting you down?--COULD you imagine it?"

He raised his head, strode forward, and grasped my hand. "Forgive me,
Cumberledge," he cried. "But a proscribed and hounded man! If you knew
what a relief it is to me to get out on the water!"

"You forget all there?"

"I forget IT--the red horror!"

"You meant just now to drown yourself?"

"No! If I had meant it I would have done it.... Hubert, for my
children's sake, I WILL not commit suicide!"

"Then listen!" I cried. I told him in a few words of his sister's
scheme--Sebastian's defence--the plausibility of the explanation--the
whole long story. He gazed at me moodily. Yet it was not Hugo!

"No, no," he said, shortly; and as he spoke it was HE. "I have done it;
I have killed her; I will not owe my life to a falsehood."

"Not for the children's sake?"

He dashed his hand down impatiently. "I have a better way for the
children. I will save them still.... Hubert, you are not afraid to speak
to a murderer?"

"Dear Hugo--I know all; and to know all is to forgive all."

He grasped my hand once more. "Know ALL!" he cried, with a despairing
gesture. "Oh, no; no one knows ALL but myself; not even the children.
But the children know much; THEY will forgive me. Lina knows something;
SHE will forgive me. You know a little; YOU forgive me. The world can
never know. It will brand my darlings as a murderer's children."

"It was the act of a minute," I interposed. "And--though she is dead,
poor lady, and one must speak no ill of her--we can at least gather
dimly, for your children's sake, how deep was the provocation."

He gazed at me fixedly. His voice was like lead. "For the children's
sake--yes," he answered, as in a dream. "It was all for the children! I
have killed her--murdered her--she has paid her penalty; and, poor dead
soul, I will utter no word against her--the woman I have murdered! But
one thing I will say: If omniscient justice sends me for this to eternal
punishment, I can endure it gladly, like a man, knowing that so I have
redeemed my Marian's motherless girls from a deadly tyranny."

It was the only sentence in which he ever alluded to her.

I sat down by his side and watche