"I don't know that that fact alone would make life insupportable. But there are other and sufficient reasons. I shall never get the hideous sight of Brathland as he doubled up, and his horrid gurgling shriek, out of my mind this side of the grave. And I am practically cleaned out. You know how much I have left of my mother's property! It barely covers what I paid out to-day. There isn't a penny for the girls. They will be dependent on Strathland--as I should be if I lived; a position for which I have as little relish as for that of a murderer on the loose. And should I ever be really safe? If this stinking quartet takes it into its head to levy annual blackmail, where is the money coming from? I won't have the others let in while I'm alive. If it did come to that--and of course it would--I'd get out anyhow, so I may as well go now and save myself further horrors. Besides, with all our precautions, we may have overlooked some significant detail, there may have been an eavesdropper, the undertakers may have had their suspicions--for all I know I may be arrested to-morrow--well, Jack, what would you do in my place?" Gwynne shook himself and stood up. "I don't know. I have been feeling as if I had killed Bratty myself. But I cannot imagine myself committing suicide--talk about ugly words! In the first place I don't think that one crime is any reason for committing another, and in the second--" "It is cowardly! You don't suppose that old standby slipped my mind, do you? Well, I am a coward. There you have my dispassionate opinion of myself. I don't see myself in the prisoner's dock, in the graceful act of dangling from the end of a rope; or, if the judge was inclined to have pity on the family, of dying in a prison hospital. Even if I trumped up the necessary fortitude I should be a blacker villain than I am to bring disgrace upon my five poor girls and the woman that has promised to marry me, to say nothing of Vicky and yourself. Nor, on the other hand, do I see myself skulking in some hole abroad with the hue and cry after me. I have just as little appetite for the role of the haunted man in comparative security. Well, what would you do yourself?" Gwynne shuddered. His own eyes were hunted. "How, in God's name, can any man tell what he would do until he is in the same hole? I should like to think that I would speak out and take the consequences. There is little danger of your swinging, and as for imprisonment--one way or another you've got to answer for your crime, and it seems to me that the honest thing is to accept the penalty of the law you live under." "Well, it doesn't to me," said Zeal, coolly, and lighting another cigarette. "I asked the question merely out of curiosity, as the workings of your mind always interest me. But I have quite made up my own mind. The only reason I hesitated a moment--to be exact, it was half a day--was on your account. Of course I know what my death will mean to you."