s to a chair, but she sinks on the edge of the sofa, too
agitated to notice her proximity to the huge mastiff.

"There is need of explanation," Philip continues, never taking his eyes
off her white, scared face. "It is time you understood me. You say I
have 'run you to earth,' as if through this long period of separation I
had been hunting you like a bloodhound, and suddenly found myself on
your track. You imagine I have just discovered you."

Eleanor's lips part as if to speak, but the words are choked back in
her throat. "Help" stirs his head, for the first time she sees he is
at her feet.

"You recall," says Philip, "that small dog--a suspicious Irish
terrier--you were given some time back?"

"What of him? How did you know?" turning her eyes wonderingly from
"Help" to Philip.

"It was killed in some bushes by a wild beast, when you were riding one
day with your lover."

"Yes."

He pauses.

The mastiff rises slowly, and stretches himself, as if wearied by his
day's work.

Eleanor draws her skirts away from contact with his coarse hair.

She sees it all at last.

"Killed," she repeats, "and by your dog."

Her breath comes quicker, she turns and peers through the window, as if
expecting something.

"There is still more," declares Philip. "That cat's-eye ring I gave
you, Eleanor--where is it?"

His voice pulses with suppressed force.

"Carol was attacked in the jungle one night----"

"By a masked fiend, who tore him from his horse and shook him by the
throat, like a cat with a mouse, then flung him aside as a scorpion too
poisonous to touch--a foul thing, only fit to lie beneath a rock,
hidden from the sight of man. When he rose up, his assailant had gone,
like a silent ghost on that lonely road."

Philip holds his lean fingers before her eyes, and flashing on one of
them gleams the greenish light of the cat's-eye gem.

Again Eleanor looks fearfully out into the night, she fancies she hears
Carol on the steps below.

"While you have been basking in your 'paradise' dreaming your
short-lived vision of love, I have watched and waited, prowling to and
fro with 'Help,' a faithful servant, at my heels. Your dog scented me,
he proclaimed my presence, so I let 'Help' silence him once and for
all. Many a night when you sat together, there in that verandah, your
hand linked in his ringless fingers, your eyes feasting on his false
face, I crouched below, watching. Did you never feel my nearness?