“You have surely thought for long enough about the past,” she said idly. Again he seized upon her words, and she reflected with some amusement that she had never imagined any one so susceptible to suggestion. “I will act on what you say,” he exclaimed. He went across to his writing table and took from his drawer an etching of a woman, slightly tinted, with coarse curly hair, cruel eyes, and a large beautiful mouth. Calladine tore it into fragments; he flung the pieces on the ground and stamped on them. “I never had the courage to do that before,” he said, staring at Clare and breathing heavily; he looked really frightened at what he had done, and she knew that he wanted her to reassure him. For her part she wanted to laugh, but knew that she must not. “You should have done it years ago,” she said sensibly, “instead of living in the house with that locked into your drawer.” “I used to take it out in the evening and pore over it until it nearly came alive,” whispered Calladine. He kicked the fragments with his toe. “You are my angel,--my guardian,” he said, turning passionately to Clare. She saw that the contradictory being was greatly shaken by what he had done. “He will regret it, and be glad,--be glad, and then regret again,” she thought shrewdly to herself. She wondered whether she had done wisely in not stopping his hand: would he be freed henceforth, or would he be haunted? “Now burn those pieces,” she said with authority, “or I shall think of you trying to piece them together again, when you sit alone here in the evenings.” The idea was half-frightening to her, and half-absurd. “Burn them,” she repeated, pointing to the grate. There was no fire, but Calladine obediently gathered up the fragments and burnt each one separately, holding its corner to a lighted match. Clare watched him, thinking how familiar must once have been to him those shredded features, how he must have kissed that beautiful mouth and imagined that he sought for truth in those narrow eyes which only returned him mockery. He knelt beside the grate, burning carefully, and crumbling the charred paper between his fingers, piece by piece. She felt sorry for him suddenly. “You must not be lonely without your picture,” she said with great gentleness. “I hated it,” said Calladine; “let it go; you have delivered me. You saw her, didn’t you, before I burnt her? you saw her exactly as she was: I was no match for her.” Clare thought that he could probably say this without exaggeration, and that, had she herself met the other woman, few words would have been necessary between them for the understanding of Calladine. How deep was the confederacy of sex! she had never thought of it before; she smiled at Calladine with a detached pity. “I have no longer any past,” he went on, “only the present, hourly more lovely. Shall we go out for a little and leave the dust of the past to settle in this room?”