“Wait! I shall come to that. I did not stop to consider all that I should have to overcome. First, there was your soul, your honour, your integrity to consider. I did not think of all those things. I did not stop to think of the damnable wrong I should be doing to you. I was blind to everything except my one great, long-enduring purpose. I could see nothing else but triumph over James Brood. To gain my end it was necessary that I should be his wife. I became his wife--I deliberately took that step in order to make complete my triumph over him. I became the wife of the man I had hated with all my soul, Frederic. So you can see how far I was willing to go to--ah, it was a hard thing to do! But I did not shrink. I went into it without faltering, without a single thought of the cost to myself. He was to pay for all that, too, in the end. Look into my eyes, Frederic. I want to ask you a question. Will you go away with me? Will you take me?” He returned her look steadily. “No!” “That is all I want to hear you say. It means the end. I have done all that could be done, and I have failed. Thank God, I have failed!” She came swiftly to him and, before he was aware of her intention, clutched his hand and pressed it to her lips. He was shocked to find that a sudden gush of tears was wetting his hand. “Oh, Yvonne!” he cried miserably. She was sobbing convulsively. He looked down upon her dark, bowed head and again felt the mastering desire to crush her slender, beautiful body in his arms. The spell of her was upon him again, but now he realised that the appeal was to his spirit and not to his flesh--as it had been all along, he was beginning to suspect. “Don't pity me,” she choked out. “This will pass, as everything else has passed. I am proud of you now, Frederic. You are splendid. Not many men could have resisted in this hour of despair. You have been cast off, despised, degraded, humiliated. You were offered the means to retaliate. You------” “And I was tempted!” he cried bitterly. “For the moment I was------” “And now what is to become of _me?_” she wailed. His heart grew cold. “You--you will leave him? You will go back to Paris? Yvonne, it will be a blow to him. He has had one fearful slash in the back. This will break him.” “At least, I may have that consolation,” she cried, straightening up in an effort to revive her waning purpose. “Yes, I shall go. I cannot stay here now. I--” She paused and shuddered. “What, in Heaven's name, have you against my--against him? What does it all mean? How you must have hated him to------”