"He dictated them; and he laughed as he did it, I suppose. Did he laugh? Tell me! Did he laugh?" Gordon shook the girl's arm savagely, his face livid and working with passion. His aspect terrified her. She dared not tell him the truth, and she turned away with a shudder. "That is answer enough," and he dropped her arm and began again pacing about the room. Now, however, he walked quietly and softly, with his shoulders rounded and his head thrust forward. His lips were drawn back from his teeth, and there was something catlike in his tread, which reminded Kate irresistibly of Hawke. Indeed, to her fevered eyes, he began to change and to grow like his enemy in face and bearing. "Don't," she whispered. "You frighten me. You remind me of him." The words recalled Gordon to himself. There was something else he wished to know. What was it? He beat his forehead with the palms of his hands in the effort to recollect. If only he could banish Hawke from his mind until she had gone! At last the question took shape. "The letters he was reading to you?" "They were notes and appointments written when we were both at Poonah," she answered, submissively. "I never thought that he would keep them, though I might have known he would." "And the three he has still?" "They were the only real letters I ever wrote to him. There were four, but I burned one to-night." "Yes! I saw." "I wrote them on the way home, from Calcutta, Aden, Brindisi and the last from London the evening I arrived." "You have never written since?" "Never! Nor have I seen him since until he compelled me to come to-night." She stopped suddenly, as if some new idea had crossed her mind. In a moment, however, she began again, but she was speaking to herself. "No. I had to come. There was no other way. I dared not leave those letters in his hands. Oh! how I hate him!" She uttered the words with a slow intensity which enforced conviction, looking straight at Gordon; and he saw a flame commence to glow in the depths of her eyes and spread until her whole face was ablaze with it. "Do you mean that?" he queried, almost eagerly. "Can you doubt it?" she replied, starting to her feet. "Oh, yes, you would! I forgot. Oh, David, if only you had understood me better!" It was what he had been saying to himself, with a deep self-reproach, and her repetition of his thought, coupled with a weary gesture of despair, exaggerated the feeling on him by the addition of a very lively pity. "So that is true, then?" he asked, hesitatingly. "You no longer care for him?" The mere weakness of the question betokened a mind in doubt, as to its choice of action, betrayed a certain tentative indecision. "I never really cared for him," she answered. A look of actual gladness showed in the man's face. They were standing opposite to one another, and the girl shut her eyelids tight, as if the sight hurt her.