her like a thunderbolt. If the
latter should prove to be the case, why, then, Geoff Clavering would be
lying, and she would be wholly and entirely innocent of the crime with
which he had charged her.

Then she spoke suddenly:

"You mean this thing? You really and truly _mean_ it?"

Geoff bowed his head in silent assent.

"That I--I--did this thing?"

Still he could not answer, could not put into brutal words the
conviction that had been forced upon him.

"That I met you and took you into Gleer Cottage last night?" she went
on. "Took you in there and showed you that man's--body? I?"

"Not exactly showed it to me--that, as we both know, is an exaggeration.
You showed me into the room where it was hanging, however. Or, at least,
you waved me to the door and told me to go in there and wait a minute or
two and you'd rejoin me and show me something that would 'light the way
back to the land of happiness!' But you never did rejoin me. I waited in
that dark room for fully ten minutes but you never came back. Afterward,
when I struck a match to light a cigarette and saw that dead man spiked
to the wall-- God! I think I went mad for the moment. I know I ran out
of the house, although I do not know when nor how; for when I came to my
senses I was racing up and down the right-of-way across the fields; and
if it had not been for you I should have run on until I dropped. But all
of a sudden I remembered you, remembered that in rushing out of the
house I had left you there; and you might come back to that room and
find me gone, and think that I had deserted you. I ran back to the place
as fast as I could. I remembered that when first you met me and took me
into it you had led me in through the gates and up the drive to the
door; but when I got back there a horror of the place seized me. I
couldn't have gone in that way again had my life depended upon it. There
was a break in the boundary wall. I got back into the grounds that way,
cutting my wrist--look, see, here's the mark--on the fragments of broken
glass which still adhered to the coping. I ran through the gardens and
round to the back of the house. I burst open the rear door and raced
along the passage to the room where De Louvisan's body hung. You were
not there. I struck another match to see, noticing this time that there
was the half of a candle standing upon the mantelpiece, where it had
been secured in its own wax. I took that thing and lit it and ran
through all the