Yet what did he utter but his own deeper and deeper condemnation? Simple, heart-full, innocent Jennie Aird be mated with his piercing and impossible view of the world! She herself, yes, even in her body's beauty, to be what his books had formerly been, what his painting was to be again--the very medium of his transcendental transgression! Why, one peep at that awful sleeping dynamo of his mind would be enough to drive her mad, one glimpse of the experience that had been his suffice to shrivel her opening heart for ever! Did he think to put off his flames and clouds and lightnings every time he whispered a love-word into her ear? What fate would be hers, poor Semele, did he forget, as he had forgotten before now, and put forth the enormousness of his power by her side? With every word he spoke it was less and less to be thought of. As far as my own carcass was concerned he might do what he pleased. I would not stand by and see it done. His vision and will might exceed mine a thousandfold, but even in my humble heart glimmered the small flame of what I considered to be my duty. I faced him, waiting for the Light again. "Very well," I said as it came over his face. "Am I to take that as your last word?" "If you please." "Then hear mine. I have a car waiting just off the Square. You may knock me on the head, as you've already threatened. At least I shall have no further responsibility for you then. But unless you do that I'm going to get straight into that car, drive to Ker Annic, and tell the Airds the whole thing before I go to bed. You'll then have the satisfaction that it's a straight fight in the open, and that you aren't creeping like a blight into a happy house under a name that isn't even your own." He spoke very, very slowly. "You mean that, George?" "Enough. I'm going to stand here without moving till the next time that Light shows your face. Then I shall do what I've said." And I stood, still as the rocks at the foot of the Crucifix, giving him his chance. V The darkness seemed an omnipresent thing, positive rather than an absence, that invaded and became part of me, of him, of the place, of the hour. Not a star was to be seen, not one speck in the immensity of the night. I did not even look where I knew his black-bloused figure to be; his hand might have been uplifted for all I knew. Or for all I cared. Once more I was weary to death of him and his domination. There was not room for both of us. He might have the field henceforward to himself. I had done what I could. It was an eleven-seconds interval. The Light came. Still I did not look at him. The Light passed away again. Four seconds, and once more the Light. Eleven seconds, the Light, four seconds, the Light.... Then only did I look up. I had not heard him move, but he had done so. He had sunk to the rocks at the foot of the Calvary, the rocks worn smooth with the sitting of generations of evening gossips. I heard a faint choke. Then his voice came.