“Yes—he’s dead. He stood in my way—blocked up the path which led to my desires. More than that, I had made a tool of him for years—had used him for every mean and petty thing I did not care to soil my own hands with. He might have told tales. Do you know what I did with him?” She looked at him with a face of horror, and slowly shook her head. “Look round these walls—look at this miserable place in which you stand. It should have a value in your eyes; for it has heard his death scream. Within a dozen yards of it, on the bank of this river—at night—I struck him down. And I’d strike him down again to-night, if he stood alive before me. And you—you thought to defy a man who felt the killing of that puny lover of yours no more than he would have felt the killing of a rat!” He had felt it, though—and he felt it still; or why did his hands tremble in their grip of the table, and why did he glance for a moment, with that blanched face, behind him? She, too, began to fear him now, as she had not feared him before; looked about her wildly, as if for a way of escape. “Ah—you shake and tremble now—do you?” he said, mockingly. “You’ll tremble more when you know what I intend to do. Think of it. You’re here, far away from any houses, and you may scream your heart out, and no one will hear you. Whatever love I felt for you has gone—turned into a viler thing. By God—pretty Miss Innocence”—he brought his fist down heavily on the table—“you shall dally with me an hour or two—for the first and last time; and then go join your lover in the river!” He darted round the table towards her; but she evaded him, screaming, and made straight towards where Philip stood. Ogledon, in his mad rush, tripped and fell; and, at the same moment, Philip caught the girl, swung her round into the darkness where he had been standing, and stepped out into the light. It was all done so rapidly, that Ogledon was on his feet, and had actually come on, with a blind rush, before he saw who stood in his path; and even then, he had no time to stop himself—scarcely time even to cry out. In a moment, Philip had him by the throat, and had forced him to his knees; bending over him, and looking full into his ghastly face, he spoke the first words that rose to his lips; re-assumed, for a moment, that character he had taken upon himself near that very spot but a week or two before. “Dandy Chater is dead—is he? Struck down by your hand from behind in the dark—murderer! Do you look into his eyes now—in this place where you killed him—or will you still cry that Dandy Chater has not come back from the grave?” The face into which Philip Chater looked, suddenly changed horribly; mouthed and chattered at him, in some unearthly tongue; and the head fell backwards. He felt the body relax, and droop under his hands; heard a sort of gasping cry; and then it slid out of his grasp to the floor. At the same moment, the door was flung open, and the place seemed full of people.