Comethup laughed quietly and glanced round the room; buttoned his coat swiftly and came at his cousin slowly, steadily, without once taking his eyes from the eyes that shifted uneasily before his. "Why, if you refuse, I'll kill you! Don't think that's a threat merely; we're near the top of this house, and I can choke the life out of you long before any one breaks in this door, or even before you can give the alarm. Understand--I'm desperate; I've staked everything on this, and I won't hesitate. Now, as we stand man to man, I'll tell you what you may have guessed before. I love your wife; to me she's higher even than the angels. And my love has this quality--that life and death and heaven and hell are nothing, mere words, compared with my love for her, compared to what that love would make me do. It's a madness, isn't it, friend Brian, that a man may love a woman so well that he would kill another man rather than see her trust in that other betrayed? She thinks nothing of me. How should she? If I killed you, she would never cease to revile my memory and hold you up as a martyr; there's where the madness comes in. But that would be best for her, better than that she should find you out. Do you understand me?" Brian looked at him curiously for a few moments and then began to laugh in a foolish, half-nervous fashion, as though he had suddenly been confronted with something he did not understand, and scarcely knew what attitude to take toward it. "Well, you're more mad than I thought you were," he said at last. "Suppose I go back to London, do you think I'm going to settle down in that dull house all my days? I tell you I'm made of different stuff. I want life, movement, music, laughter about me; a dull old dog like you can't understand that." "You shall have them all," said Comethup eagerly. "Come, I'll make no one-sided bargain; let's understand one another. I've shown you my hand, shown you the reason for this thing I'm doing. Don't think I'm doing it for your sake; you needn't flatter yourself to that extent. In all these things I put her first--her happiness is the great thing. Now, if I ask you to take up again a life which you say is distasteful, I'll take upon myself to make it sweet. You shall have what money you want; I have a large income now, and when--God forgive the thought, but you force me to say it--when my aunt dies I shall be a very rich man. If you do this thing, I swear to you you shall never need money; that's all it's in my power to do, as a complete outsider, for the woman I love. She won't ever know it, and you--well, you can keep her happy."