She looked at me with horror.
"You do not believe—" she gasped.
"Oh! I believe nothing," I answered,—"nothing at all! Every word I have been told by both of you is a lie! Your lives are lies! God knows why I should ever have believed otherwise!" I said, looking at her.
"Let me go," Louis pleaded, "and you shall hear the truth."
"I shall be more likely to feel the knife you have in your pocket," I answered contemptuously, for I had seen his left hand struggling downward for the last few moments. "Oh! I'll let you go! I have no interest in any of you,—no interest in your cursed conspiracy, whatever it may be! Keep your story. I don't care to hear it. Lie there and talk to your accomplice!"
I sent him reeling across the room till he fell in the corner. Then I walked out, closing the sitting-room door behind me,—out into the corridor and up the stairs into my own room. Then I locked and bolted my own door and looked at my watch. It was a quarter to three. I took a Bradshaw from my bookcase, packed a few clothes myself, set an alarm clock for seven o'clock in the morning, and turned into bed. I told myself that I would not think. I told myself that there was no such person in the world as Felicia, that she had never lived, that she was only part of this nightmare from which I was freeing myself! I told myself that I would go to sleep, and I stayed awake until daylight. All the time there was only one thought in my brain!