een so credulous, so easily deceived. In the state of chronic
depression reactive to his orgy he let out all the truth about himself
in a passion of self-indulgent penitence. His tales of secret service
were, he told her, not technically lies. They were the delusions of his
deranged mind. He had read a spy book in England just before meeting
her, when he was recovering from a similar orgy; it had made a dint on
his brain similar to the impression left by the French girl earlier. In
the same way he explained his morbid tales of Chinese tortures--once, in
a fit of melancholy, he had attempted suicide, and after his recovery
had gone to the seaside with his mother to recuperate; in the
boarding-house had been a collection of books on atrocities. It seemed
that everything he read or saw when in a state of physical relaxation
affected him psychologically. Marcella did not realize this, however,
until long afterwards.

The tales he had told her about his parentage he was inclined to treat
with amusement.

"Don't you know, darling, that that's the first thing a man says when
he's crazed with any sort of delirium? Either his mother's honour or
some other woman's goes by the board. I just had a variant on that
theme--that's all."

She was silent for a while, crushed.

"And then the things you said to me, Louis. About me and--that awful Mr.
King and old Hop Lee who brings the fruit. They are simply unforgivable.
Louis, I'll do all I can to help you, my dear, but I'm finished with
you. You sneered at me because you knew I liked to kiss you. Nothing on
earth can ever make me do it again."

"Marcella," he said solemnly, "the other night I had d.t.--just a mild
attack. Ask any doctor and he'll tell you about it. Those things I said
to you _I_ didn't say, really. They were just lunacy. There was an
Indian student at the hospital who used to assure us solemnly that
delirious or drugged or drunk people were possessed by the spirits of
dead folks; drunkards by drunkards' spirits who wanted drink so badly
they got into living bodies to satisfy their craving that even death
couldn't kill. I used to laugh at him as a mad psychic. But I'm hanged
if it doesn't look as if there's something in it. You know _I_ couldn't
talk to you like that, little girl, don't you? You forget that this is
illness, dearie."

"I'm afraid I do, Louis. Anyway, whether it's you or--or--an obsessing
spirit, or anything else, I can't help it. I can't have you t