He loathed the man. To be condemned to hug him close to his person set jarring every nerve of physical repulsion. Raine did not handle him tenderly in that moonlight walk. Whilst sitting on the bench, the American had been coherent in his speech, but his fall and resignation to slumber on the pavement had relaxed the tension of his mind, and he grew maudlin and inarticulate. Now and then he remonstrated with his protector for hurrying him along so fast. In fact, Raine, in his passionate desire to shake himself free of the incubus, was unconsciously exerting his great strength almost to carry him bodily. In the middle of the bridge, Hockmaster laughed softly to himself. “To think I should see her again. Dear little Kitty.” A horrible wave of disgust swept through Raine. He gripped the man viciously. “Damn you! If you mention her name again, I'll pitch you into the lake.” “That would be a pity,” murmured the American in a panting murmur. “I can't swim.” Raine increased his pace, so that speech became for the American a physical impossibility. In the midst of his disgust came the memory of the last time he had come homewards across that bridge. Then, too, he had hurried blindly, anxious to reach the pension. The cynical irony of the parallel smote him. A clock struck two as they reached the corner of the street. Hockmaster was limply happy, comfortably breathless. Raine propped him against the wall as he waited for the _concierge_ to open to his ring. The door was soon swung open, and Raine dragged the American up the dark staircase. When they reached the latter's bedroom, he flung him in unceremoniously and left him to himself. Then, when he was alone, rid of the man's body, Raine pieced the story together more calmly. It was sickening. His fair pure Katherine to have given herself to that little drunken cad, to have wrecked her life for him--it was sickening. There are times in a man's career when the poetry of life seems to be blotted out, and its whole story nothing but ignoble prose. CHAPTER XIV.--THE WEAKER SIDE. Raine had judged her very gently. He had rightly guessed that she had fallen upon the thorns wherewith society strews the land outside its own beaten paths. His insight into the depths of her nature had awakened within him a strong man's yearning pity. In his eyes she was the frail tender thing that had been torn and wounded, and he had taken to his heart the joy of the knowledge that his arms would give her rest and peace at the last.