The blood was running down across his cheek in a stream from a wound in the upper edge of his high forehead. She stood dumb with physical fear. He came close, in laboured breath, his face still sick and white with the desire to kill. The voice was hard and metallic with the vibrant ring of steel. "Say your prayers, young woman," he said, slowly. "You are going on a long journey from whence no traveler has yet returned." She staggered and caught a chair, trembling and shivering. "Frank, dear, have you gone mad?" she gasped. "Yes, I went mad in this house one day at the sight of your devil's beauty, and I have been mad from that hour. Now we have come to the end." "You will not kill me?" she begged, in piteous fear. "I cannot die; I am afraid. Surely you love me; you cannot--" He seized her wrists and she cowered with a scream. He held them in one hand and with the other swept her magnificent hair around her throat, grasped it in his iron fist, and thus choking her, thrust the shivering figure backward into the chair. She managed to free her hands, threw her arms around his neck, and tried to smother him with kisses. "Frank, dear, I'll love you. Surely you will not kill me. Have pity for all that I have been to you in the past--" "Hush," he said softly, putting his big hand over her full lips. "Why such childish terror? Love has its moments of sublime cruelty. This impulse to kill is only the awful desire for utter possession, the climax of love. I'll go with you. Neither life nor death shall take you from me." With a tremulous moan, she sank into a swoon in his arms. He loosed the hair from her throat, paused, and looked tenderly at the still white face. Then he sighed, groaned and kissed her. "No, no, no, no; not that!" he cried, beneath his breath. "How beautiful she is! I brought her to this. Yes, I was the master of her heart and life. I could have made her anything, angel or devil. I have made her what she is--One last kiss"--he bent and gently touched her lips--"and this the end." With tenderness he laid her on the lounge, loosed her corsage, smoothed gently the tangled hair from her white face, closed the door, and went to his room. He bathed the blood from his forehead and bound it with a piece of plaster. His head began to swim. A sharp pang shot through his breast, and he felt he was suffocating. He began to shiver with the instinctive desire to escape, threw some things into a bag he usually carried, stopped and scowled with uncertainty. "What's the use? What is there to live for?" Yet the big muscular hands kept on at their task. An hour later he struggled and staggered up the hill through the black, roaring storm and rang Ruth's doorbell. CHAPTER XXX THE CLOUD'S SILVER LINING