"Taking leave of the place. I've given it up."
His visitor uttered a passionate ejaculation.
"You are mad!" he said.
"Aye," bitterly. "Mad enow."
The next instant a strange sound burst from him,—a terrible sound, forced back at its birth. His struggle to suppress it shook him from head to foot; his hands clinched themselves as if each were a vise. Murdoch turned aside.
When it was over, and the man raised his face, he was trembling still, and white with a kind of raging shame.
"Blast you!" he cried, "if there's ever aught in your face that minds me o' this, I'll—I'll kill you!"
This Murdoch did not answer at all. There was enough to say.
"You are going to share it with Ffrench?" he said.