"Let me have your explanation first. I was not prepared to find Susan in your room. I was surprised to see traces of tears in her face. Something has happened in my absence. Am I concerned in it?" "You are." I said it quietly--in full possession of myself. The trial of fortitude through which I had already passed seemed to have blunted my customary sense of feeling. I approached the disclosure which I was now bound to make with steady resolution, resigned to the worst that could happen when the truth was known. "Do you remember the time," I resumed, "when I was so eager to serve you that I proposed to make Susan your wife by making her rich?" "Yes." "Do you remember asking me if I was thinking of the play we saw together at Rome? Is the story as present to your mind now, as it was then?" "Quite as present." "You asked if I was performing the part of the Marquis--and if you were the Count. Rothsay! the devotion of that ideal character to his friend has been my devotion; his conviction that his death would justify what he had done for his friend's sake, has been _my_ conviction; and as it ended with him, so it has ended with me--his terrible position is _my_ terrible position toward you, at this moment." "Are you mad?" Rothsay asked, sternly. I passed over that first outbreak of his anger in silence. "Do you mean to tell me you have married Susan?" he went on. "Bear this in mind," I said. "When I married her, I was doomed to death. Nay, more. In your interests--as God is my witness--I welcomed death." He stepped up to me, in silence, and raised his hand with a threatening gesture. That action at once deprived me of my self-possession. I spoke with the ungovernable rashness of a boy. "Carry out your intention," I said. "Insult me." His hand dropped. "Insult me," I repeated; "it is one way out of the unendurable situation in which we are placed. You may trust me to challenge you. Duels are still fought on the Continent; I will follow you abroad; I will choose pistols; I will take care that we fight on the fatal foreign system; and I will purposely miss you. Make her what I intended her to be--my rich widow." He looked at me attentively. "Is _that_ your refuge?" he asked, scornfully. "No! I won't help you to commit suicide." God forgive me! I was possessed by a spirit of reckless despair; I did my best to provoke him. "Reconsider your decision," I said; "and remember--you tried to commit suicide yourself." He turned quickly to the door, as if he distrusted his own powers of self-control. "I wish to speak to Susan," he said, keeping his back turned on me. "You will find her in the library." He left me. I went to the window. I opened it and let the cold wintry air blow over my burning head. I don't know how long I sat at the window. There came a time when I saw Rothsay on the house steps. He walked rapidly toward the park gate. His head was down; he never once looked back at the room in which he had left me.