"You will suffocate--choke me!" she gasped, and her eyes seemed as if starting from her head--her voice came thickly from her quivering lips. "Well, I will be gentler, my tender dove!" he said a little satirically. He doubted her again. If she had had "any mind of him," would not that kiss of his have effectually broken down all barriers of pique, and launched her on a sea of passion? But there was charm to such a _gourmet_ in love, as he considered himself, in appropriating what she disliked to give. He took her hand. "Come and sit with me on our friend the medico’s sofa under the window there!" he coaxingly said. "I want to look at my wife, to kiss her, embrace her after these years of longing, of waiting!" She gave him an involuntary glance of horror and terror. "Presently," she stammered. "First let me give you the money I have brought you--let us settle about our journey, when it is to be." He stood still for a few moments, gazing steadily at her. That look had told him much--the mention of money when he asked for love told him still more. "Very well," he said, after a pause, during which she wondered whether it would end in his killing her--in that lonely house she was at the mercy of any sudden outburst of anger of his. Just then she felt that death would be preferable to another kiss of the kind which still stung her icy lips. "I suppose the money is in that bag?" he went on, going to the writing-table and lifting it. "You want me to take care of it for you, as your contribution to our honeymoon?" He spoke sneeringly. "Yes," she said, watching him as he seated himself before the table. Then she went to him, took up the bag, and shook out six common leather purses she had bought at the bazaar in a great emporium that morning, and filled during the afternoon. Purses and gold alike were untraceable. "There are a hundred and twenty-five sovereigns. Count them, won’t you?" "No! I will trust you," he said, with a sinister smile. "I may be a fool for my pains, but I trust you." She sat as if spellbound, watching him take a small bunch of keys from his pocket and open a worn old travelling desk on the table. It was his own, that desk, she mechanically thought, as she noted the half obliterated letters "V.M." on the flap, and wondered what was passing within his mind to cause that dark frown, that cruel look in his black eyes, as he slowly packed in the purses one by one.