h God knows however much I
wronged her I loved her, yes, and love her now. Well, it is a good bit
of evidence, if ever I dare to use it. It is a game of bluff between
me and her, and I expect that in the end the boldest player will win."

He rose from the sofa--the atmosphere of the place stifled him, and
going to the window threw it open and stepped out on to the balcony.
It was a lovely moonlight night, though chilly, and for London the
street was a quiet one.

Taking a chair he sat down there upon the balcony and began to think.
His heart was softened by misery and his mind fell into a tender
groove. He thought of his long-dead mother, whom he had dearly loved,
and of how he used to say his prayers to her, and of how she sang
hymns to him on Sunday evenings. Her death had seemed to choke all the
beauty out of his being at the time, and yet now he thanked heaven
that she was dead. And then he thought of the accursed woman who had
been his ruin, and of how she had entered into his life and corrupted
and destroyed him. Next there rose up before him a vision of Belle,
Belle as he had first seen her, a maid of seventeen, the only child of
that drunken old village doctor, now also long since dead, and of how
the sight of her had for a while stayed the corruption of his heart
because he grew to love her. And then he married Belle by foul means,
and the woman rose up in his path again, and he learnt that his wife
hated him with all the energy of her passionate heart. Then came
degradation after degradation, and the abandonment of principle after
principle, replaced only by a fierce craving for respectability and
rest, a long, long struggle, which ever ended in new lapses from the
right, till at length he saw himself a hardened schemer, remorselessly
pursued by a fury from whom there was no escape. And yet he knew that
under other circumstances he might have been a good and happy man--
leading an honourable life. But now all hope had gone, that which he
was he must be till the end. He leaned his head upon the stone railing
in front of him and wept, wept in the anguish of his soul, praying to
heaven for deliverance from the burden of his sins, well knowing that
he had none to hope for.

For his chance was gone and his fate fixed.

CHAPTER XVII

THE TIGRESS IN HER DEN

Presently a hansom cab came rattling down the street and pulled up at
the door.

"Now for it,"