“Well,” he said, “I have heard it all, I suppose. It makes little difference. You know, of course, you are morally responsible for his death, just the same as if you had stuck a knife into his heart.” I could only hide my face in the bedclothes, writhed all through with agony. There was a little spell of silence; then my brother bespoke my attention with a gentle push. “Renny, do you want all this known to the others?” I raised my head in a sudden gust of passion. “Do what you like!” I cried. “I know you now, and you can’t make it much worse!” “Oh, yes,” he said, coolly; “I can make it a good deal worse. Nobody but I knows at present, don’t you see?” I looked at him with a sudden gleam of hope. “Don’t you intend to tell, Jason?” He laughed again, lightly. “That depends. I must borrow my cue from Modred and make conditions.” I had no need to ask what they were. In whatever direction I looked now, I saw nothing but a blank and deadly waste. “I want the girl--you understand? I need not go into particulars. She interests me and that’s enough.” “Yes,” I said, quietly. “There must be no more of that sentimental foolery between you and her. I bore it as long as you were ill; but, now you’re strong again, it must stop. If it doesn’t, you know what’ll happen.” With that he turned abruptly on his heel and began to undress. I listened for the deep breathing that announced him to be asleep with a strained fever of impatience. I felt that I could not think cleanly or collectedly with that monstrous consciousness of his awake in the room. Perhaps, in all my wretchedness, the full discovery of his baseness of soul was as bitter a wound as any I had received. I had so looked up to him as a superior being, so sunned myself in the pride of relationship to him; so lovingly submitted to his boyish patronage and condescension. The grief of my discovery was very real and terrible and would in itself, I think, have gone far to blight my existence had no fearfuller blast descended to wither it. Well, it was all one now. Whatever immunity from disaster I was to enjoy henceforth must be on sufferance only. Had I been older and sinfuller I might have grasped in my despair at the coward’s resource of self-destruction; as it was, I thought of flight. By and by, perhaps, when vigor should return to me, and with it resolution, I should be able to face firmly the problem of my future and take my own destinies in hand. Little sleep came to me that night, and that only of a haunted kind. I felt haggard and old as I struggled into my clothes the next morning, and all unfit to cope with the gigantic possibilities of the day. Jason had gone early to the fatal pool for a bathe.