He strode through the crowds, seeing nothing of them, hearing nothing but the beat of his own heart. Even for a man so strong as he, the last hour had been terrible. Never before in all his life, at the moment of realization when some great scientific theory had materialized into stupendous fact, when first Marjorie had promised to marry him--at any great crisis of his life--had he undergone so furious a strain as this of the last hour. He came out of the Palace Hotel, knowing that he had carried out his intentions with the most consummate success. He came out of it, realizing that not half-a-dozen men in England could have done what he had done, and as the keen air smote upon his face like a blow from the flat of a sword, he realized also that not six men in England, walking the pleasant, happy streets of any town, were so unutterably stained and immeasurably damned as he. As he passed through the revolving glass doors of his own hotel, and the hall-porters touched their caps, he exerted all the powers of his will. He would no longer remember or realize what he had done and what it meant to him. He would only rejoice in his achievement, and he banished the fear that comes even to the most evil when they know they have committed an almost unpardonable sin. He did not use the lift to go to his sitting-room on the second floor; he ran lightly up the stairs, wanting the exercise as a means of banishing thought. He entered his own room, switched on the electric light, took off his coat, and stood in front of the fire, stretching his arms in pure physical weariness. Yes! That was over! Another step was taken. Once more he had progressed a step towards his desire, in spite of the most adverse happenings and the most forbidding aspects of fate. The unaccustomed brandy at the Palace Hotel, and the bromide solution he had dropped into it, had calmed his nerves, and suddenly he laughed aloud in the rich, silent room, a laugh of pure triumph and excitement. Even as the echoes of his voice died away, his eyes fell upon the table and saw that there was a letter lying there addressed to him. The address was written in a well-known handwriting. He took it up, tore open the envelope and read the communication. It was this--