ife for a life'? You killed Roger Unthank."

"I have killed other men since in self-defence," Dominey told her.
"Sometimes it comes to a man that he must slay or be slain. It was Roger
Unthank--"

"I shall not talk about him any longer," she decided quite calmly. "The
night before last, his spirit was calling to me below my window. He
wants me to go down into Hell and live with him. The very thought is
horrible."

"Come," Dominey said, "we shall speak of other things. You must tell me
what presents I can buy you. I have come back from Africa rich."

"Presents?"

For a single wonderful moment, hers was the face of a child who had been
offered toys. Her smile of anticipation was delightful, her eyes had
lost that strange vacancy. Then, before he could say another word, it
all came back again.

"Listen to me," she said. "This is important. I have sent for you
because I do not understand why, quite suddenly last night, after I had
made up my mind, I lost the desire to kill you. It is gone now. I am
not sure about myself any longer. Draw your chair nearer to mine. Or no,
come to my side, here at the other end of the sofa."

She moved her skirts to make room for him. When he sat down, he felt a
strange trembling through all his limbs.

"Perhaps," she went on, "I shall break my oath. Indeed, I have already
broken it. Let me look at you, my husband. It is a strange thing to own
after all these years--a husband."

Dominey felt as though he were breathing an atmosphere of turgid and
poisoned sweetness. There was a flavour of unreality about the whole
situation,--the room, this child woman, her beauty, her deliberate,
halting speech and the strange things she said.

"You find me changed?" he asked.

"You are very wonderfully changed. You look stronger, you are perhaps
better-looking, yet there is something gone from your face which I
thought one never lost."

"You," he said cautiously, "are more beautiful than ever, Rosamund."

She laughed a little drearily.

"Of what use has my beauty been to me, Everard, since you came to my
little cottage and loved me and made me love you, and took me away from
Dour Roger? Do you remember the school chidden used to call him Dour
Roger?--But that does not matter. Do you know, Everard, that since you
left me my feet have not passed outside these gardens?"

"That can be altered when you wish," he said quickly. "You can visit
where you will. You can have a motor-car, even a house