"He had also a lot of talk about Power, that if he liked he could have any one in his power, and so could I if I liked. You had only to know other people's weaknesses enough. And more than that. Some stuff about its being good for people to suffer. That the thing that made life interesting and worth while was its intensity, and that life was never so intense as when we were suffering. That, after all, God liked us to suffer. Why shouldn't _we_ be gods? We might be if we only had courage enough. "It was then, that morning, that it first entered my head that there was something wrong with him--something wrong with his brain. It had never occurred to me during all those months because he had always been so logical, but now--he seemed to step across the little bridge that separates the sane from the insane. You know how small that bridge is?" Harkness nodded his head. "Then all in a moment he took my arm and twisted it. I can't give you any sort of idea how queer and nasty that was. As he did it he peered into my face as though he didn't want to miss the slightest shadow of an expression. Then--I don't know if you noticed when he shook hands with you--his fingers haven't any bones in them, and yet they are beastly powerful. He ought to be soft all over and he _isn't._ He twisted my arm once and smiled. It was all I could do to keep from knocking him down. But I broke away, told him to go to hell and left the house. From that moment I hated him. "It was directly after this that I noticed for the first time that he had his eye on Hesther, and he had his eye upon her exactly because she hated him and wouldn't go near him if she could possibly help it. I must stop for a moment and tell you something about her. You've seen her, but you cannot have any kind of idea how wonderful she really is. "She has the most honourable loyal character you've ever seen in woman. And she's never been in love--she doesn't know what love is. Those are the two most important things about her. That doesn't mean that she's ignorant of life. There's nothing mean or sordid or disgusting that hasn't come into her experience through her beauty of a father, but she's stood up to it all--until this, this Crispin marriage. The first thing in her life she's funked. "She's been saved all along by her devotion to one thing, her family--her father and two brothers. She must have given her father up pretty completely by now, seeing that it was hopeless; but her small brothers--why, they are the key to the whole thing! If it weren't for them she wouldn't be where she is to-night, and, as I have said, if the elder one had known anything about it he wouldn't have allowed it, but he's away on a foreign station and Bobby's too young to understand.