Pelham never quite remembered how he got into the street. He was only conscious of having completely lost his self-control, of a mad whirl of emotions, which deprived him, for the moment, of all ordinary sense and prudence. A loathing for the man with whom he had been conversing, a certainty that there was a real foundation for his appalling fears, both combined to overbalance a brain already strained to the utmost. When the cold night air, however, blew on his heated forehead he quickly recovered himself, and seeing that he could do nothing further went home. Having seen Pelham out, Tarbot returned to his smoking-room. There was a grim determination about his thin lips and a frown between his brows—thought was working hard in his active brain. After a short time given to reflection, he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, laid it in its accustomed place on the mantelpiece, turned off the electric light and went up-stairs. He entered the drawing-room. He knew that here he should find the woman he had lately married. He found her stretched in an easy chair beside the fire. Her hands were lying idly in her lap, her eyes were shut—she was fast asleep. Tarbot had always a quiet tread. He now advanced almost on tiptoe and stood looking down at her. “The price I have paid for my sin,” he muttered under his breath. He drew a chair forward and softly seated himself. The woman was unconscious of his presence, and he could look at her; he could fill his soul with loathing of her, and drink the cup which he had prepared for his own lips to the dregs. His face was white as he gazed at Clara. She did not look well in her sleep. There were haggard lines round her lips—lines which had come far too soon, for she was still quite a young woman. Her cheeks were hollow, she coughed now and then. Her dead-white complexion, with its disfiguring freckles, gave her face the look of the dead. “Would she were dead!” muttered Tarbot. “Would she were——” From the face he looked down at the hands, the arms, the outlines of the thin limbs. “There is a certain grace about her,” he said to himself, “but it is the grace of the panther, the tigress. If I married another woman now I should commit bigamy. I could curse her.” He bent a little nearer, and then a queer and eager light began to grow in his eyes. “I believe it is true,” he said to himself. He rose softly, left the room, and returned with his stethoscope. Clara’s dress was partly open at the thin neck. With the delicate hand of the practised surgeon, he was able to apply the stethoscope to her chest without rousing her. He listened attentively, not making a thorough examination of her lungs, but one sufficient for his purpose.