To my astonishment he covered his face with his hands and his body began to heave with sobs. Without stirring a muscle I waited for his explanation. I divined that to be my cue. He grew calmer by degrees, and at length with a sheer muscular effort he forced himself to look at me. He shivered as he met my eyes and groaned aloud. "Woman!" I muttered cuttingly. "You--hard devil!" he hissed with sudden passion. He started forward, and our glances contended for a moment, but his quailed before mine. "Answer me," I commanded. He bit his lips until the blood appeared, and he gripped the sides of his chair with all his energy. "Answer me," I repeated. Of a sudden he began to cough. He coughed so violently that the convulsions racked his frame, and at length he sank back in his chair half-fainting, with half closed eyes. I waited pitiless as fate. "Answer me," I repeated. "Must I wait for ever?" But the fight had gone out of him. He heaved a sigh, and two salt tears trickled down his cheeks. "You know," he muttered, in a low, heartbroken wail. "You know--you know!" "Answer me," I thundered. Sir William Dagmar might have known, you see, but I was ignorant. "I am going to give it to her--to her," he murmured; his eyes were now quite closed and he seemed upon the verge of a collapse. This would never do! I strode forward and shook him roughly by the shoulder. "To whom?" I hissed. "To Marion, Marion Le Mar." He sat up and looked dazedly around. "Oh, do what you please," he cried wildly, as he met my eyes. "What do I care--I have not long to live in any case. A few months more or less, what does it matter? And she--God help her, she needs it--needs it as well you know--you hard, inhuman devil!" "You are mad!" I hissed. "What claim has that woman upon you?" "The woman I love?" He sprang to his feet and faced me with just such a look as a tiger might defend his mate. "The woman I should have married, but for the accursed laws of the society which you enticed me into joining!" "You are a consumptive, a death's head!" I sneered. "A nice man you to marry any woman! Fool that you are, ask yourself would she have married you?" He gave me a look of almost sublime contempt. "She loves me!" he said, and there was in his bearing a dignity so proudly self-conscious, yet compassionate, that my heart went out to the man; I began to pity him profoundly, ay, and wish to help him. I could hardly understand myself. I had never felt like that for any living creature prior to that instant. But I had work to do, pressing work, and I put my feelings resolutely aside. "George Cavanagh," said I, "you reproach me with having bound you to a society whose laws forbid your marrying the woman you love. But it seems to me you aspire to break another of its laws in giving her this money. What of that?"