“This will never do. I must shake it off or I shall die,” he said, groping in the blackness gathering around him. “I must not die. I must live to kill Harry and then shoot myself, and no one but Connie will ever know why.” This was his thought the entire night. There was a revolver in his drawer, and he took it out and examined it, finding two balls in its chambers. “One for Hal and one for me,” he said as he replaced it in the drawer. He didn’t prickle now at all, nor feel at all, except that he was going to kill Harry, and he waited impatiently for the dawn, which came, rosy and bright and sweet, with the scent of flowers and the hay his father had cut the day before. He saw the smoke curling up from the kitchen chimney of the villa and knew the servants were astir. “Hal will not be up for hours, maybe; he was always a late riser,” he thought, “and I can’t kill him in bed before Kitty and the baby Connie. I must wait. There are things I must say to him, and Kitty must never know she is not his wife, or why I killed him. I must find him alone.” He tried to seem natural at breakfast, but his mother saw something was the matter, and charged it to fatigue and Connie’s absence. After breakfast he went to the stable, where Pro and Con whinnied him a welcome, the latter rubbing her head against his arm in token of her gladness at seeing him. “I shall never feed you again, my pets,” he said, as he gave them double their usual allowance, and then there flitted through his mind a vague wonder as to what would become of them and his father and mother, and what the world would say. He didn’t care. He was going to kill Harry, and he kept saying it to himself while watching the villa. At last he saw Kitty come out in her big hat and red parasol, with Cindy and the baby cart and the baby in it. They were going for a walk, and he watched them till they were out of sight, and thought what a dainty little body Kitty was, and how pretty she looked in her white gown and big hat with red poppies upon it. But it didn’t matter. He was going to kill Hal, and now was his time. He found him in what had been fitted up as his den. Evidently he had not been up long, for he was in his dressing-gown and slippers, and had the air of one just out of bed. He was, however, smoking a cigarette, and on the table beside him were glasses, with soda water, lemons, brandy, whisky and sugar. As Kenneth appeared in the door he sprang up, and, extending his hand, exclaimed in his old, cheery way: “Hallo, Ken! I take it very nice in you to call so soon. When did you get home? Sorry you found me _en dishabille_. Fact is, baby had stomach ache, and kept me awake. She’s gone out with Kitty. Great baby, that, and named for your Connie.”