He got up and went to where the glass cylinders lay and touched one.
“I will smash one of these with my foot and take off my mask, and you shall have at least the satisfaction that you know who I am before you die—but only just before you die!”
She looked at him steadily.
“I will never marry you,” she said, “never! If for no other reason, for your villainous plot against my brother.”
“Your brother is a fool,” said the hollow voice. “He need never have gone through that agony, if you had only promised to marry me. I had a man ready to confess, I myself would have taken the risk of supporting his confession.”
“Why do you want to marry me?” she asked.
It sounded banal, stupid. Yet so grotesque was the suggestion, that she could talk of the matter in cold blood and almost without emotion.
“Because I love you,” was the reply. “Whether I love you as Dick Gordon loves you, I do not know. It may well be that you are something which I cannot possess, and therefore are all the more precious to me—I have never been thwarted in any desire.”
“I would welcome death,” she said quickly, and she heard the muffled chuckle.
“There are worse things than death to a sensitive woman,” he said significantly, “and you shall not die until the end.”