Hawke, as he finished each letter, placed it methodically on a file which lay by his side. One, however, seemed longer than the rest and afforded him peculiar interest. He turned back to the first page and read it a second time, pointing here and there to passages with his finger. All at once the slender figure of a girl moved into the light. She passed round the table and stood behind Hawke's shoulder, her face gleaming pale as ivory from a cloud of tumbled hair. Gordon recognized her on the instant. It was Kate Nugent. She bent over Hawke as if to follow him more closely, and with a sudden clutch tore the paper from his hand and flung it into the fire. Hawke started to his feet, transfigured. Some such flame as was shrivelling the letter seemed to leap across his face. He pinned Kate's wrist to the table and thrust his head close down upon hers. What he said Gordon could not distinguish for the closed window, but he noticed a savage incisiveness about the movement of his lips, and saw the veins swell upon his forehead and along his throat. For a moment the girl confronted him, returning glance for glance, but only for a moment. The defiance flickered out of her face, her lips shaped to an entreaty, and, with a meek gentleness which was infinitely pitiful, she unclasped the fingers about her wrist. She moved towards the window, stumbling as she went. She felt blindly for the catch, unfastened it as though her hands were numbed, and slowly lifted the sash. CHAPTER III She leaned against the sill, gazing into the darkness. After a while she turned. Hawke was watching her with a complacent smile. "And it pleases you to torture me! You enjoy seeing a woman suffer. I couldn't have believed that any man could be such a coward and so mean!" Hawke laughed pleasantly. "Give them to me!" she cried. "Think!" he answered in a mock appeal. "They will be my only consolation after you are married." "Give them to me!" she cried again. Hawke was standing by the fireplace and she moved towards him, changing her tone to one of wondering reproach. "You can't mean to keep them! You are just laughing at me--for the minute. Yes! yes! I know. That was your way. But you will give me the letters in the end, won't you? Look! I will kneel to you for them. Only give them to me!" And she sank on her knees at his feet before the fire. "They will be much safer with me," he replied. "You might leave them about. David might pry. And it would strain even his innocence to misunderstand them." "Can you think I should keep them?" she said with a shiver of disgust. "Give them to me or burn them yourself! Yes!" she continued, feverishly, clutching his arm, "burn them yourself--now--here--and I will thank you all my life." She stirred the coals into a blaze. "See! They will burn so quickly," and she darted out her hands towards the file. Hawke snatched it away. "No, no!" he laughed. "You must vary your game if you mean to win."