"I came here. And I've been here ever since. It is a part of the world that throws a charm around every one who stays long enough under its spell. And I grew to loving it as much as Milo did. We had a beautiful life here, he and I and the cordial, lovable people who became our friends. It was last spring that Rodney Hade came to see us. Milo had known him, slightly, down here, years ago. He came back here--nobody knows from where, and rented a house, the other side of Coconut Grove, and brought his yacht down to Miami Harbor. Almost right away, he seemed to gain the queerest influence over Milo. It was almost like hypnotism. And yet, I don't altogether wonder. He has an odd sort of fascination about him. Even when he is discussing his snakes." "His snakes?" "He has three rooms in his house fitted up as a reptile zoo. He collects them from everywhere. He says--and he seems to believe it--that they won't hurt him and that he can handle them as safely as if they were kittens. Just like that man they used to have in the post office up at Orlando, who used to sit with his arms full of rattlesnakes and moccasins, and pet them." "Yes," said Gavin, absentmindedly, as he struggled against an almost overmastering impulse which was gripping him. "I remember. But at last one of his pets killed him. He--" "How did you know?" she asked, surprised. "How in the world should a newcomer from the North know about--" "Oh, I read it in a Florida dispatch to one of the New York papers," he said, impatient at his own blunder. "And it was such a strange story it stuck in my memory. It--" "Well," resumed Claire, "I think I've made you understand the simple and natural things that led up to it all. And now, I'll tell you everything, at least everything I know about it. It's--it's a gruesome sort of story, and--and I've grown to hate it all so!" She quivered. Then, squaring her young shoulders again, she continued: "I don't ask you to believe what I'm going to tell you. But it's all true. It began this way: "One night, six months ago, as Milo and I were sitting on the veranda, we heard a scream--a hideous sound it was--from the mangrove swamp. And a queer creature in drippy white came crawling out of--" "Wait!" Brice's monosyllable smashed into the current of her scarce-started narrative with the jarring suddenness of a pistol shot. She stared up at him in amaze. For, seen through the starlight, his face was working strangely. And his voice was vibrant with some mighty emotion. "Wait!" he repeated. "You shan't go on. You shan't tell me the rest. I'm a fool. For I'm throwing away the best chance that could have come to me. I'm throwing it away with my eyes open, and because I'm a fool." "I--I don't understand," she faltered, bewildered.