He had thought nothing the widow could tell him would take him by surprise, and here he now was fairly breathless and amazed. There was no doubt in his mind this Fahey had not been the social equal of Marion Butler, and Blake was of opinion the man's origin had been much lower than Mr. Davenport's, though whence the dead man had sprung he did not exactly know. Kilcash House had not always been the dead man's property. He had bought it only a little while before his marriage. Davenport seemed to be a man accustomed to meet men only. He was not by any means at his ease in an ordinary mixed company, and he had explained this to Blake by saying that until comparatively late in life he had been almost wholly a business man and unaccustomed to the society of ladies. But now what ghastly light shone on the dire tragedy of the Crescent House in Dulwich! What a wonderful revelation was this! Fahey, the humble follower of the dead man, had been an admirer of the dead man's wife; and he who had been declared dead a decade of years ago was by her believed to be living, and to have been connected directly with her husband's death! No wonder he was giddy. No wonder he could find no words to speak to her. No wonder he could only stand and gaze at her in stupid fear, revolving in a dim light the ghostly pageant of the past. It was she who broke the silence. "I wish I were dead!" Her voice recalled him to her presence and the immediate hour. He took her by the hand, led her to a seat, and began pacing up and down the room without speaking. "Advise me," she went on, after a pause. "Advise me, out of mercy. If I were dead, there would be no lips to tell, no soul to suspect the horrors by which I am haunted. Advise me. You know more of me than any other living being. Shall I die?" Still he could not speak. Her question came to his ears as though it were something apart from her personality and his consideration--as though it were a tedious impertinence rising from an indifferent source. Although he knew he was in that room with the widow of Louis Davenport, and that she had just said she believed Fahey was alive, and had killed her husband from jealousy, he could not give the situation substantial form. There were confounding murmurs in his ears, and indeterminable shadows floating before his eyes. His mind was clamorous for quiet, and the clamour stunned and confounded him. "Speak to me," she pleaded. "I am not deserted, yet I am alone. I have always been alone since I can first remember. Only I myself have broken the solitude in which I lived. Once, long ago, I thought you were coming towards me from a distance, to share my solitude, but you--you--went by. I felt like a castaway on a desolate island, who sees a sail bear down upon him in the twilight, only to find the morning sea a barren desert of water. Should I die? That is not a hard question for you to answer, is it?" "No; not a hard question, Marion. You must live." "For what?"