“My daughter has gone to London with Gale?” he said very slowly. The smile had died away from his face and his eyes were filled with tears. “Yes. They were married to-day. They have gone to London.” “Janet!” He called her name softly as though she were in the next room. “Janet!” He waited as though he expected an answer, and then suddenly he burst into tears. His head fell forward between his arms on to the table; his shoulders shook. Maradick watched him. It was the most desolate thing in the world; he felt the most utter cad. If it had been possible he would have, at that moment, brought Janet and Tony back by main force. “I say,” he muttered, “I’m awfully sorry.” He stopped. There was nothing to say. Then suddenly Morelli looked up. The tears seemed to have vanished, but his eyes were shining with extraordinary brilliance. His hands, with their long white fingers, were bending over the table; his upper lip seemed to have curled back like the mouth of a dog. He looked at Maradick very intently. “You saw them married?” “Yes.” “You saw them leave for London?” “Yes.” “You have helped them all this time?” “Yes.” “Why?” “I thought that they ought to marry; I was fond of both of them. I wanted them to marry.” “And now I will kill you.” He said it without moving; his face seemed to grow more like a beast’s at every moment. His hands stretched across the table; the long fingers were like snakes. “I must go.” Maradick got up. Panic was about him again. He felt that he ought to make some kind of defence of what he had done, but the words would not come. “You will see, afterwards, that what I did was best. It was really the best. We will talk again about it, when you feel calmer.” He moved towards the door; but Morelli was coming towards him with his head thrust forward, his back a little bent, his hands hanging, curved, in mid-air, and he was smiling. “I am going to kill you, here and now,” he said. “It is not a very terrible affair. It will not be very long. You can’t escape; but it is not because you have done this or that, it is not for anything that you have done. It is only because you are so stupid, so dreadfully stupid. There are others like you, and I hate you all, you fools. You do not understand anything—what I am or who I am, or the world—nothing.” Maradick said nothing. The terror that had once seized Tony was about him now like a cloud; the thing that was approaching him was not a man, but something impure, unclean. It was exactly as though he were being slowly let down into a dungeon full of creeping snakes. His breath was coming with difficulty. He felt stifled. “You must let me out,” he gasped.