ow," he said.

"And if you could have seen the awful agony of self-reproach she was in
that day!" urged the other. "It seemed almost like someone blind
restored to sight when I put the whole thing to her in a few words.
Under any other circumstances it would have been laughable--the quick
transformation, I mean."

"Yet they had something to go upon--something to go upon," repeated the
wounded man slowly. "I may as well tell you all about it, though
there's not much to tell."

Evelyn's clasp of the hand she held, tightened.

"You know I was under arrest years ago on suspicion of doing away with
my--legal partner in life?"

Evelyn nodded. Since she had overheard the two women's gossip she had
gone straight to Hyland and got the whole story out of him. Thornhill
went on.

"The strange part of the whole thing is that I didn't do it."

"I never for one fraction of a second supposed _you_ did."

"You stand pretty well alone there," answered Thornhill with a pressure
of the hand. "To cut a long story--and a very unpleasant one, for even
now the taste comes back--short, the party to whom I had given my name,
when I was young and foolish, and who, incidentally, gained far more by
the transaction than I did, led me a most shocking life. No--it wasn't
owing to drink, it was sheer innate devilishness. This went on for
years--by the bye you can still see some of its results in the way Edala
has turned against me ever since. That process, however, had begun
before, and not only with this child but with all of them. Well let's
get to the end of the abominable rotten episode, for the bare telling of
it makes me sick."

"Then don't tell it, Inqoto. Why should you?" adjured Evelyn earnestly,
and very uneasily as she remembered the doctor's injunctions that the
wounded man was not to be allowed to excite himself in the least degree.
Yet, now, his face was flushed and he was moving restlessly in the bed.

"I'd better get it over. Fact is I haven't mentioned the matter to
anybody--since--since it happened. You are the first. One night--after
raising a particularly shameful and scandalous scene--good Lord! it's
lucky the walls at Sipazi can't talk--she rushed out of the house
swearing that she was going to put an end to herself. Candidly I didn't
in the least care if she did, to such a pass had things come; however I
thought I should probably be suspected of murder if such a thing
happened. So I started to follow h