is
something in my head that thinks. The thoughts in men, it's like being
drunk with liquor or--You can't stop them. A man who thinks will think
anything. No! But have you seen it. Have you?"

"I tell you I have! I am certain!" said Powell forcibly. "I was looking
at you all the time. You've done something to the drink in that glass."

Then Powell lost his breath somehow. Mr. Smith looked at him curiously,
with mistrust.

"My good young man, I don't know what you are talking about. I ask
you--have you seen? Who would have believed it? with her arms round his
neck. When! Oh! Ha! Ha! You did see! Didn't you? It wasn't a
delusion--was it? Her arms round . . . But I have never wholly trusted
her."

"Then I flew out at him, said Mr. Powell. I told him he was jolly lucky
to have fallen upon Captain Anthony. A man in a million. He started
again shuffling to and fro. "You too," he said mournfully, keeping his
eyes down. "Eh? Wonderful man? But have you a notion who I am? Listen!
I have been the Great Mr. de Barral. So they printed it in the papers
while they were getting up a conspiracy. And I have been doing time. And
now I am brought low." His voice died down to a mere breath. "Brought
low."

He took his hands out of his pocket, dragged the cap down on his head and
stuck them back into his pockets, exactly as if preparing himself to go
out into a great wind. "But not so low as to put up with this disgrace,
to see her, fast in this fellow's clutches, without doing something. She
wouldn't listen to me. Frightened? Silly? I had to think of some way
to get her out of this. Did you think she cared for him? No! Would
anybody have thought so? No! She pretended it was for my sake. She
couldn't understand that if I hadn't been an old man I would have flown
at his throat months ago. As it was I was tempted every time he looked
at her. My girl. Ough! Any man but this. And all the time the wicked
little fool was lying to me. It was their plot, their conspiracy! These
conspiracies are the devil. She has been leading me on, till she has
fairly put my head under the heel of that jailer, of that scoundrel, of
her husband . . . Treachery! Bringing me low. Lower than herself. In
the dirt. That's what it means. Doesn't it? Under his heel!"

He paused in his restless shuffle and again, seizing his cap with both
hands, dragged it furiously right down on his ears. Powell had lost
hi