"I am extremely unfortunate," he faltered aloud. "I don't know how to account for it." And he glanced about him helplessly. Before the words had fairly left his lips his privacy was broken in upon. The door was flung open and Murdoch came in. He had evidently walked fast, for he was breathing heavily, and he had plainly expected to find the room empty. He looked at Ffrench, sat down and wiped his lips. "I want you," he began, with labored articulation, "I want you--to tell me--what--I have done." Ffrench could only stare at him. "I went to the house," he said, "and asked for her." (He did not say for whom, nor was it necessary that he should. Ffrench understood him perfectly.) "I swear I saw her standing at the window as I went up the path. She had a purple dress on--and a white flower in her hair--and Saint Meran was at her side. Before, the man at the door never waited for me to speak; this time he stood and looked at me. I said, 'I want to see Miss Ffrench;' he answered, 'She is not at home.' 'Not at home,'"--breaking into a rough laugh,--"'not at home' to _me_!" He clinched his fist and dashed it against the chair. "What does it mean?" he cried out. "What does it _mean_?" Ffrench quaked. "I--I don't know," he answered, and his own face gave him the lie. Murdoch caught his words up and flung them back at him. "You don't know!" he cried. "Then I will tell you. It means that she has been playing me false from first to last." Ffrench felt his position becoming weaker and weaker. Here was a state of affairs he had never seen before; here was a madness which concealed nothing, which defied all, which flung all social presuppositions to the winds. He ought to have been able to palter and equivocate, to profess a well-bred surprise and some delicate indignation, to be dignified and subtle; but he was not. He could only sit and wonder what would come next, and feel uncomfortable and alarmed. The thing which came next he had not expected any more than he had expected the rest of the outbreak. Suddenly a sullen calmness settled upon the young fellow--a calm which spoke of some fierce determination. "I don't know why I should have broken out like this before you," he said. "Seeing you here when I expected to fight it out alone, surprised me into it. But there is one thing I am going to do. I'll hear the truth from her own lips. When you go home I will go with you. They wont turn me back then, and I'll see her face to face." "I----" began Ffrench, and then added, completely overwhelmed, "Very--perhaps it would be--be best." "Best!" echoed Murdoch, with another laugh. "No, it won't be best; it will be worst; but I'll do it for all that." And he dropped his head upon the arms he had folded on the chair's back, and so sat in a forlorn, comfortless posture, not speaking, not stirring, as if he did not know that there was any presence in the room but his own.