‘Hope,’ he said, in a low voice; ‘you are young; you are beautiful; you can yet enjoy life; but,’ in a deliberate cruel manner, ‘you will not, for the river claims you as its victim.’ Something in his voice fills her with fear, and looking up she reads death in his face, and sinking on her knees she holds out her helpless hands with a pitying cry for life. ‘Strange,’ observed M. Vandeloup, with a touch of his old airy manner; ‘you come to commit suicide and are not afraid; I wish to save you the trouble, and you are, my dear--you are illogical.’ ‘No! no!’ she mutters, twisting her hands together, ‘I do not want to die; why do you wish to kill me?’ lifting her wan face to his. He bent down, and caught her wrist fiercely. ‘You ask me that?’ he said, in a voice of concentrated passion, ‘you who, with your long tongue, have put the hangman’s rope round my throat; but for you, I would, by this time, have been on my way to America, where freedom and wealth awaits me. I have worked hard, and committed crimes for money, and now, when I should enjoy it, you, with your feminine devilry, have dragged me back to the depths.’ ‘I did not make you commit the crimes,’ she said, piteously. ‘Bah!’ with a scoffing laugh, ‘who said you did? I take my own sins on my own shoulders; but you did worse; you betrayed me. Yes; there is a warrant out for my arrest, for the murder of that accursed Pierre. I have eluded the clever Melbourne police so far, but I have lived the life of a dog. I dare not even ask for food, lest I betray myself. I am starving! I tell you, starving! you harlot! and it is your work.’ He flung her violently to the ground, and she lay there, a huddled heap of clothing, while, with wild gesticulations, he went on. ‘But I will not hang,’ he said, fiercely; ‘Octave Braulard, who escaped the guillotine, will not perish by a rope. No; I have found a boat going to South America, and to-morrow I go on board of her, to sail to Valparaiso; but before I go I settle with you.’ She sprang suddenly to her feet with a look of hate in her eyes. ‘You villain!’ she said, through her clenched teeth, ‘you ruined my life, but you shall not murder me!’ He caught her wrist again, but he was weak for want of food, and she easily wrenched it away. ‘Stand back!’ she cried, retreating a little. ‘You think to escape me,’ he almost shrieked, all his smooth cynical mask falling off; ‘no, you will not; I will throw you into the river. I will see you sink to your death. You will cry for help. No one will hear you but God and myself. Both of us are merciless. You will die like a rat in a hole, and that face you are so proud of will be buried in the mud of the river. You devil! your time has come to die.’