A few minutes later the train stopped at a station, but nobody got in, and presently it moved on again. “Any passengers for Effry?” shouted the porter, and there had been no response. If they did not stop at Effry there would be no halt for forty minutes. Now was his time. He waited a little till they had got up the speed. The line here ran through miles and miles of fen country, more or less drained by dykes and rivers, but still wild and desolate enough. Over this great flat the storm was sweeping furiously—even drowning in its turmoil the noise of the travelling train. Very quietly he rose and climbed over the low partition which separated his compartment from that in which the woman was. She was seated in the corner, her head leaning back, so that the feeble light from the lamp fell on it, and her eyes were closed. She was asleep. He slid himself along the seat till he was opposite to her, then paused to look at the fierce wicked face on which drink and paint and years of evil-thinking and living had left their marks, and looking shuddered. There was his bad genius, there was the creature who had driven him from evil to evil and finally destroyed him. Had it not been for her he might have been a good and respected man, and not what he was now, a fraudulent ruined outcast. All his life seemed to flash before his inner eye in those few seconds of contemplation, all the long weary years of struggle, crime, and deceit. And this was the end of it, and _there_ was the cause of it. Well, she should not escape him; he would be revenged upon her at last. There was nothing but death before _him_, she should die too. He set his teeth, drew the loaded pistol from his pocket, cocked it and lifted it to her breast. What was the matter with the thing? He had never known the pull of a pistol to be so heavy before. No, it was not _that_. He could not do it. He could not shoot a sleeping woman, devil though she was; he could not kill her in her sleep. His nature rose up against it. He placed the pistol on his knee, and as he did so she opened her eyes. He saw the look of wonder gather in them and grow to a stare of agonised terror. Her face became rigid like a dead person’s and her lips opened to scream, but no cry came. She could only point to the pistol. “Make a sound and you are dead,” he said fiercely. “Not that it matters though,” he added, as he remembered that the scream must be loud which could be heard in that raging gale. “What are you going to do?” she gasped at last. “What are you going to do with that pistol? And where do you come from?” “I come out of the night,” he answered, raising the weapon, “out of the night into which you are going.” “You are not going to kill me?” she moaned, turning up her ghastly face. “I can’t die. I’m afraid to die. It will hurt, and I’ve been wicked. Oh, you are not going to kill me, are you?”