After several moments of increasingly rapid talk, we were both standing, he defiantly with one hand on the edge of the mantelpiece, I at the other end of the hearth. He had risen a moment before at certain words of mine, as if to inform me that our interview was over. Once I had seen his eyes move towards the place where the bell-rope should have been, but that lay, a red woollen heap, on the floor behind me, and he would have had to pass me in order to get into his bedroom. He had found an appearance of forcefulness in the use of violent words. "Why, damn your impudence!" he blustered. "Look here, my good man! If you suppose I'm going to be talked to like this by you or anybody else----" "Then deny the fact," I said for the fifth time. "I'll not deny or anything else till I know what right----" "I know it comes late, but I've spoken of it before." "Yes--sneaking behind my back!" he said hotly, probably again remembering his recent conversation with Miss Angela. "To your face." "Yes--and if it hadn't been for something else I should have told you then what an interfering devil you were!" "Merridew," I said slowly, "it's the last time." He sneered. "I'm glad of that--and confound you for a meddler!" he cried. "If that's all you came for, get out, and I'll get somebody else to look after my trunk!" We were silent for a space, and in that space I heard the voice of that human Jeffries, almost pitifully seeking still to save him. "Give him every chance," sobbed that Jeffries, "he's only a weakling--you could crush him mentally as you could physically--it would be little better than infanticide--try him again--show him that red thing on the floor--and that carved thing on the door." But now Archie in his turn seemed to have become divided. He had suddenly turned white. But an habitual pertness still persisted in his tongue. I don't think this had any relation whatever to the physical peril he seemed at last to have realised he was in. I stood over him huge and black as Fate.... "Spare him if you can," that generous bloodthirsty devil in me muttered quickly. "Merridew," I said heavily, "you'll disappear to-morrow morning ... _or_----" "Shall I?" he bragged falteringly.... "And you won't come back. I shall stay here to-night and put you into the train myself." "Then you'll have to sleep in the bath--and you should know by this time how small that is," came from his lips. And yet it came only from his lips. His terrified heart had no part in it. His only chance now was to have screamed aloud. But he did not scream. Instead, he stooped swiftly, caught up the poker, and struck at my head with it.