plications, she rose to her feet.

"Yes," he said, "be quiet while I think if I can spare you," and he
half turned his head away from her. For a moment nothing was heard but
the rush of the gale and the roll of the wheels running over and under
bridges.

This was her opportunity. All her natural ferocity arose within her,
intensified a hundred times by the instinct of self-protection. With a
sudden blow she struck the pistol from his hand; it fell upon the
floor of the carriage. And then with a scream she sprang like a wild
cat straight at his throat. So sudden was the attack that the long
lean hands were gripping his windpipe before he knew it had been made.
Back she bore him, though he seized her round the waist. She was the
heavier of the two, and back they went, /crash/ against the carriage
door.

It gave! Oh, God, the worn catch gave! Out together, out with a yell
of despair into the night and the raging gale; down together through
sixty feet of space into the black river beneath. Down together, deep
into the watery depths--into the abyss of Death.

The train rushed on, the wild winds blew, and the night was as the
night had been. But there in the black water, though there was never a
star to see them, there, locked together in death as they had been
locked together in life, the fierce glare of hate and terror yet
staring from their glazed eyes, two bodies rolled over and over as
they sped silently towards the sea.

CHAPTER XXXVII

SISTER AGNES

Ten days had passed. The tragedy had echoed through all the land.
Numberless articles and paragraphs had been written in numberless
papers, and numberless theories had been built upon them. But the
echoes were already beginning to die away. Both actors in the dim
event were dead, and there was no pending trial to keep the public
interest alive.

The two corpses, still linked in that fierce dying grip, had been
picked up on a mudbank. An inquest had been held, at which an open
verdict was returned, and they were buried. Other events had occurred,
the papers were filled with the reports of new tragedies, and the
affair of the country lawyer who committed bigamy and together with
his lawful wife came to a tragic and mysterious end began to be
forgotten.

In Boisingham and its neighbourhood much sympathy was shown with
Belle, whom people still called Mrs. Quest, though she had no title to
that name. But s