As if in answer to the gesture he spoke, bluntly, almost brutally. "If you will have it, you shall; but remember, it is final. Miss Campion was suffering from a hideous and absolutely incurable disease of the brain which had developed into homicidal madness. She might have lived for years--a blinded soul fettered to a brain of raving insanity. What her life would have been, only those who have seen can picture. But, mercifully for her--rightly or wrongly is not for me to say--her torment was brought to an early end. In fact, almost before it had begun, a friend gave her deliverance. She died--as you know--suddenly." "Ah!" With a cry she broke in upon him. "It was--the pain-killer!" "It was." He scarcely opened his lips to reply, and instantly closed them in a single unyielding line. His eyes never left her face. As for Olga, she stood a moment, as one stunned past all feeling; then turned from him and moved away. "So it was--your doing," she said, in a curious, stifled voice as if she were scarcely conscious of speaking at all. He did not answer her. The words scarcely demanded an answer. She reached the table unsteadily, and sat down, leaning her elbow upon it, her chin on her hand. Her eyes gazed right away down far vistas unbounded by time or space. "It isn't the first time, is it?" she said. "You did it once before. I suppose--" her voice dropped still lower; she seemed to be speaking to herself--"as a Keeper of the Door, you think you have the right." "Will you tell me what you mean?" he said. She did not turn her head. She still gazed upon invisible things. "Do you remember poor old Mrs. Stubbs? You helped her, didn't you, in the same way?" "I?" said Max. The utter astonishment of his voice reached her. She turned and looked at him. "She died in the same way," she said. "But--great heavens above--not with my connivance!" he exclaimed. She continued to look at him, but with that same far look, as though she saw many things besides. "Yet--you knew!" she said. He made a curt gesture of repudiation. "I suspected--perhaps. I actually knew--nothing." "I see," she said, with a faint smile. "She just slipped through--and you looked the other way." "Nothing of the sort!" he said sternly. "I did my utmost--as I have always done my utmost--to prolong life. It is my duty--the first principle of my profession; and I hold it--I always have held it--as sacred." "And yet--you let Violet's go," she said. He swung round almost violently and turned his back. "I will not discuss that point any further," he said.