"Nothing, dearest girl—nothing."
"Oh, but there is something!" She exclaimed passionately. "I've known it right along. I haven't asked because I thought you'd tell me. Why—one must be blind not to see how you've changed! You're—you're just a skeleton of yourself, Gregory." She paused for breath. "Can't you bring yourself to tell me—can't you, dear?"
"If I only knew," he muttered, "if I only knew—for certain."
Her eyes were lifted to his. The brows met in a puckering frown above them.
"Gregory—that time you were away—for a whole fortnight—did anything happen, then—Gregory?"
"Did anything happen?" She had surprised him into it. "Good God, did anything happen? Why, you don't know what it was like—You couldn't know! If they'd told me such a thing were possible—I shouldn't have believed it! I wanted to think—I wanted to work the thing out for myself—so I went down there for a rest. Rest—"
He broke off then, but she stood very silently beside him and presently he went on again.
"Have you ever felt you were going mad, Kathleen? Raving, tearing—mad? That's how I felt for two weeks. I thought it would never end. And all the time—why, I couldn't think! I couldn't do anything but feel that something was driving me to do something—something tremendous, as if the very force of my own life were making me do this thing that I had been sent into life to do. And, Kathleen," his voice sank to a hoarse whisper, "I couldn't understand—what—it—was!"
She put her arm about his neck and drew his head down until her cheek rested on his.
"I couldn't think a thought," he muttered. "I'd laid myself open to the thing. It just swept over me and through me. It saturated me with the impulse to do the thing I had come into the world to do! The one thing that stood out—was—the feeling that it would have to be done—soon." He paused for a moment. "And then one afternoon at the club—when I'd been back a day or two—something came to me-a sudden knowledge of—well, of rottenness—that—that might have to be done away with—as if that had something to do with it. Only I don't know, Kathleen—not—as yet."