"It was too late"—white to the lips, Paul Valmain raised his clenched fists—"it was too late—after months of it! I could save her only one thing—the knowledge that I knew her shame. I was across the street—I saw her—God pity me—I loved her—the black cloak and hat she wore only a few days before when we were together! I have lived in hell and torment and fear that it might be so since that afternoon—that afternoon—did you think I did not see the key in your hand, and—"
"What do you mean?"—there was a sudden blackness curiously streaked with red before Jean's eyes; the blood was sweeping in a mad tide upward in his face to pound like trip-hammers at his temples—the man's words could bear only one interpretation, a hideous one, that outraged his soul, and roused a seething fury within him. "What do you mean?" he said again between his teeth.
"I mean," Paul Valmain answered, "I mean—damn you, you know what I mean! I mean that from two o'clock in the morning until daylight Myrna Bliss was in your rooms, and—"
"You devil from hell!" Jean shouted—and leaped at the other's throat. If the man struggled he did not realise it. The man was only an impotent, powerless thing in his grasp—and he flung him away, flung him crashing to the floor. "I will kill you for that!" he whispered. "To-night—you can find a friend downstairs to act for you—I another."
Paul Valmain staggered to his feet.
"I have waited all day for the same purpose!" The devil's laugh was on the grey lips again.
"It is à l'outrance, Monsieur Valmain—you understand!"—Jean choked in his fury. "A l'outrance!"
"As you shall see!"
"And the studio—if it suits you! We shall not be disturbed. There is room there, and you will find it as pleasant a place as any in which to die!"
"Where you will!" retorted Paul Valmain. "Where you will—so there is no delay!"