“There is one thing you are not to think--you are not to think that she had any hand in what was done.” “But it’s all so awful! It’s all come upon me in an instant: it’s taken me unawares. What am I to think after what she said, and did, in that room?” “You are to be sure that she is as innocent as a child.” “But what am I to think? It seems now that you both were there. I have no doubt whatever that the man quite deserved being killed; if she didn’t kill him, then did you?” “God forbid!” Miss Moore had her hat on. She made a discovery. “I had a cloak. I feel sure I had a cloak. Where’s it gone?” “Never mind about your cloak; it’s warm enough to-day, you’ll be able to do quite well without it.” I caught Miss Adair’s glance; plainly she remembered what I had said about the condition of that garment; there was renewed suspicion in her eye. I turned to Mrs. Peddar. “We don’t want to go through the main entrance; isn’t there another way?” “There is the service lift, and there are the service stairs.” “The very thing; show us where they are.” She showed us where they were; and we three went down the servants’ staircase, through a back door, into a side street, no one saying us nay. I saw the two girls into a cab. As they were starting Miss Moore leaned her head out. She looked at me with eyes which were, to me, like magnets. Her lips formed a single word: “John!” As the hansom drove off, and, turning the corner, passed from sight, I felt as if something had gone out of my life. CHAPTER XIV. HE AND I As I returned to my chambers my whole being seemed to be a battlefield on which conflicting thoughts and feelings were fighting to a finish. I had not supposed that my nature could have been utterly disorganized by occurrences such as those which had come crowding upon me during the last few hours. I am a hard man. My life has been lived, for the most part, in odd corners of the world, where, single-handed, I have fought the fight for fortune; in places where human life is not held of much account, and where one would have thought as little of killing such a man as Edwin Lawrence appeared to have been, as destroying any other noxious animal. I have ever been a fighter. Men have called me “Fighting John.” I have had to defend my own life, and have not hesitated, when circumstances required, to take the lives of others. I learnt, long ago, that there are occasions when killing is not alone the best, but the only cure. But I have had nothing to do with women. I have never been on familiar terms with one of them. I have always been aware that they are better than I, and that consciousness has made me shy of them, as of a church. But while one knows that a church is a place for sinners, one’s sense of decency tells one that evil ought not to come into contact with a woman. So I have kept clear. Until that night.