“Do I mean it?” he laughed. Then his hands gripped the arms of the chair and he leaned forward. “I saw her--last evening after dinner.... Her shoulder was black.” A sharp cry broke from Jean’s lips. “Not--not--he hadn’t----” Nick nodded. “He had struck her. There was one of the usual scenes when they got back from the Moor--and he struck her.... It’s the first time he has ever actually laid hands on her. It’s going to be the last”--grimly. Jean was silent. Her whole soul was in revolt against the half-mad, drug-ridden creature who was making of Claire’s life a devil martyrdom; the instinct to protect her, to succour her in some way, asserting itself with almost passionate force. And yet---- She knew that Nick’s way was not the right way. “Yes, it must be the last time,” she agreed. “But--but, Nick, your plan won’t do, you know.” Nick stiffened. “Think not?” he said curtly. “Can you suggest a better?” Then, as Jean remained miserably silent: “Nor can I. And one thing I swear--I won’t leave the woman I love in the hands of a man who is practically a maniac, to be tortured day after day, mentally and physically, just whenever he feels like it.” It struck Jean as curious that Nick had been able, more or less, to keep himself in hand whilst Sir Adrian inflicted upon Claire whatever of mental and spiritual torture seemed good in his distorted vision. It was the fact that he had hurt her physically, laid his hand upon her in actual violence, which had scattered Nick’s self-control to the four winds of heaven. To Jean herself, it seemed conceivable that the mental anguish of Claire’s married life had probably far outstripped any mere bodily pain. Half tentatively she gave expression to her thoughts. Nick sprang to his feet. “Good God!” he exclaimed. “If you were a man, you’d understand! I see red when I think of that damned brute striking the woman I love. It--it was sacrilege!” “And won’t it be--another kind of sacrilege--if you take her away with you, Nick?” asked Jean very quietly. He flushed dully. “He’ll divorce her, and then we shall marry,” he answered. “Even so”--steadily--“it would be doing evil that good may come.” “Then we’ll do it”--savagely. “It’s easy enough for you to sit there moralising, perfectly placid and comfortable. Claire and I have borne all we can. It has been bad enough to care as we care for each other, and to live apart But when it means that Claire is to suffer unspeakable misery and humiliation while I stand by and look on--why, it’s beyond human endurance. You’re not tempted. You’ve no conception what you’re talking about.” Jean sat very still and silent while Nick stormed out the bitterness of soul, recognising the truth of every word he littered--even of the gibes which, in the heedlessness of his own pain, he flung at herself. Presently she got up and moved rather slowly across to his side.