Tortured beyond bearing, this final taunt, levelled at the woman he held more dear than anything in life, snapped his last thread of self-control. He flung himself forward and his hands were gripping, gripping at the soft ivory throat from which the taunt had sprung. He felt the woman writhe, struggling to pull his hands from her neck. But it meant nothing to him. He did not think of her any longer as a woman. She was something vile--leprous to the very core of her being--a thing to be destroyed. The thing which had made of all Jean’s promised happiness a black and bitter mockery. The mad Tormarin rage surged through his veins like a consuming fire. He would break her--break her and utterly destroy her just as one destroyed a deadly snake. And then across the thunderous roar that beat in his ears came the beloved voice, the voice that would have power to call him out of the depths of hell itself--Jean’s voice. “Blaise! Blaise! What are you doing? Stop!” CHAPTER XXXII--THE DIVIDING SWORD SLOWLY, reluctantly, Tormarin’s hands loosened their clasp of Madame de Varigny’s throat, and with a swift, flexible twist of the body she slipped aside and stood a few paces away from him. Jean looked from one to the other with horrified eyes. “Madame de Varigny?--Blaise?” she stammered. “What is it?... Why, you--you might have killed her, Blaise!” He stared at her blankly. His release of the Italian woman had been in mere blind response to Jean’s first imperative appeal that he should desist But the mists of ungovernable anger had hardly yet cleared from his brain; the blood still drummed in his ears like the roar of the sea. “Blaise”--Jean spoke imploringly. “What were you doing? Tell me------” With an effort he seemed to recover himself. “It’s a pity you didn’t let me finish it, Jean,” he said harshly. “Such women are better dead.” Madame de Varigny was fingering her neck delicately where the pressure of Blaise’s grip had scored red marks on the cream-like flesh. She seemed quite composed. Her smile still held its quiet triumph and her long dark eyes gleamed with the same mockery that had brought her within measureable distance of quick death. “As Monsieur Tor-ma-rin seems to find a difficulty in explaining--permit me,” she said at last “He was angry with me because I bring him the good news that his wife is still alive, that he need mourn no longer.” While she spoke her eyes, resting on Blaise’s mask-like face, held an expression of malicious satisfaction. “His wife... alive?” repeated Jean dazedly. “Blaise, is she mad? Nesta has been dead years--years.” Then, as he made no answer, she continued rapidly, a faint note of fear vibrating in her voice: “Isn’t it so? Blaise--speak! Quickly, tell her--Nesta has been dead some years!” “He cannot tell me anything about her which I do not know already, Mees Peterson, seeing that she is my sister and has been living with me ever since her husband’s cruelty drove her from his home.”