fear. "How do you know?"

"Because I saw you. I was standing outside, close to the house."

"Why were you there?" she put in quickly.

He was slower in answering. "I had gone to see your father--about you. I
was standing there, thinking ... waiting, when the front door opened, and
you and Thalassa came out. I was surprised to see you, but it seemed to me
an opportunity--a final chance--to speak to you again. I started after
you, Sisily, once more to ask you to consider my love for you, but you and
Thalassa were swallowed up in the darkness of the moors before I could
reach you. I followed with the intention of overtaking you, but I got lost
on the moors instead, and was wandering about in the blackness for nearly
half an hour before I found my way back to Flint House again."

"Could you not tell them--the police--that?" she asked, a little
wistfully.

"It would be useless," he solemnly replied.

"What do you mean?" she said breathlessly.

His rejoinder was a long time in coming. When his set lips moved the words
were barely audible. "Because I would not be believed. Because I went
straight up the path to the house, determined to see your father before it
grew later. The front door was open, and the house seemed in complete
darkness. I entered, and went upstairs. There was a light in your father's
study. I found your father--dead." He fixed care-worn eyes upon her. "That
story sounds incredible, even to you, doesn't it? But--"

"Oh!" That startled cry seemed wrung from her involuntarily. Then,
swiftly, as if her mind had detached itself to look on her own actions
that night through his eyes: "You thought, you believed that I--" She
checked herself, but her look completed the thought.

"I did not know what to think, but I did not think--that," he gloomily
rejoined. "Afterwards, the next night, I found out something which made me
think--" He paused.

"Yes, yes, tell me what you thought," she said nervously.

"I thought it was Thalassa."

She shook her head.

"Who was it then? The latest theory of the police is that I had something
to do with it. They're looking for both of us. They must have found out
that I was at Flint House that night. It's too late to tell them the truth
now, not that they were likely to have believed me at any time. Why, my
own father believes that I did this thing." He laughed discordantly. "I
tried to convince your father's lawyer of your innocence, and I might have
told him the truth