"No," he said doggedly; "I won't sign, and I won't consent to this devilish deed."
Again Romanoff laughed. "Look at me, Dick, my boy," he said. "You are not a milksop; you were made to live your whole life. Fancy you being a clerk in an office, a store—a poor little manikin keeping body and soul together in order to do the will of some snivelling tradesman! Think of it! Think of Anthony Riggleton living here, or in London, in Paris, in India—or wherever he pleases—squandering his money, and satiated with pleasure, while you—you——Pooh! I know you. I see you holding Lady Blanche in your arms. I see you basking in the smiles of beautiful women all over the world. I see the name of Faversham world-wide in its power. I see——" and the Count laughed again.
All the while, too, he kept Dick's eyes riveted on his own—eyes which told him of a world of sensuous delights, and which robbed him of his manhood. No, he could not bear to become poor again, and he would not give up the delights he had dreamt of. Right! Wrong! Good! Evil! They were only words. The Count was right. It was his right to enjoy.
"All right, I'll sign," he said.
He dipped the pen into the ink, and prepared to inscribe his name, but the moment he placed his hand on the paper it felt as though it were paralysed.
"There is something here!" he gasped.
"Something here? Nonsense."
"But there is. Look!"
It seemed to him that a ray of light, brighter than that of the electric current that burnt in the room, streamed towards him. Above him, too, he saw the face that was now becoming familiar to him. Strange that he had forgotten it during the long conversation, strange that no memory of the evening before, when over the doorway he had seen an angel's face beaming upon him and warning him, had come to him.
But he remembered now. The night on the heaving sea, the vision on the island, the luminous form over the doorway of the house, all flashed before him, and in a way he could not understand Romanoff's influence over him lessened—weakened.