And then the voice. "I know now why I am here, and what has been done to me during these long, leaden hours. I am now at the point of death. But, with all your devilish cleverness, with all your brilliancy, you are but as a child. I suppose I shall not see you again, but I forgive you, Gouldesbrough, forgive you utterly. And it is easier for me to do this, because I know that you are lying. In this world she still loves me, in the next she is mine, as I am hers. And it is because you know this that you come and rant and laugh, and show yourself as the fearful madman that you are. Good-bye, good-night; I am happier than you as I lie here, because I know that, for ever and a day, Marjorie loves me and I love Marjorie. And it won't be any time at all before we meet." And once again the laugh that echoed from stone wall to ceiling of stone, was blithe and confident. CHAPTER XX THOUGHTS OF ONE IN DURANCE Once more the cell was only tenanted by the victim. Sir William had gone, the great door had clanked and clicked, and Guy Rathbone still lay upon his couch of torture. The electric light still shone, as Gouldesbrough had forgotten to turn it off, or perhaps did not know that this was the invariable custom of his assistant when Rathbone was clanked and bolted down to his bed of vulcanite. It was the first visit that Sir William had paid to the living tomb to which he had consigned his rival. Rathbone had laughed indeed, and his laugh was still echoing in the frenzied brain of the scientist as he mounted upwards to the light of day. But the laugh, though it had indeed been blithe and confident, had been a supreme effort of will, of faith and trust, was merely the echo and symbol of a momentary state which the tortured body and despairing mind could not sustain. Rathbone could not move his head, fixed tight as it was in its collar. But two great tears rolled from the weakened and trembling eyelids down the gaunt, grey cheeks. The supreme ecstasy of belief and trust in the girl he loved, the hope of meeting her again in another world where time was not and where the period of waiting would be unfelt, passed away like a thing that falls through water. Once more a frightful emptiness and fear came down over him like a cloud falls. From where his couch was placed, though he could not turn his head, he could see nearly the whole interior of his cell. There were the concrete walls, each cranny and depression of which he knew so well. There was the other, and scarcely less painful, bed upon which he slept, or tried to sleep at such times when exhausted nature mercifully banished the pain of his soul. It was not day when he slept, it was not night, for day and night are things of the world, the world with which he was never to have any more to do, and which he should never see again with material eyes.