"To-night! This very night!" Millar cried, laughing satanically and triumphantly. "To-night I shall play with her as I please. Oh, what joy! What exquisite joy! For ten thousand years no lovelier mistress."
"What's that?" Karl cried, taking a step toward him.
"Mistress, I said—mistress! She will do whatever I wish—to-night, at her home. You will see, when the lights are bright, when the air is filled with perfume—before day dawns, you will see."
"Stop, stop!" Karl cried warningly.
"Be there and you will run after your lost sovereign," Millar went on tauntingly. "Every minute you don't know where she is she is spending with me. A carriage passes you with drawn blinds, and your heart stands still. Who is in it? She and I. You see a couple turn the corner with arms lovingly interlocked. Who was that? She and I—always she and I. We sit in every carriage. We go around every corner. Always she and I—always clinging to each other, always lovingly. The thought maddens you. You run through the streets. A light is extinguished in some room, high up in a house. Who is there? She and I. We stand at the window, arm in arm, looking down into your maddened eyes, and we hold each other closer, and we laugh at you."
"Stop, damn you, stop!" Karl cried, beside himself and trying to shut out the terrible monotony of Millar's voice.
"We laugh at you, you fool," the fiend cried again hoarsely. "And her laughter grows warmer and warmer until she laughs as only a woman can laugh in the midst of delirious joy."
With a maddened scream of rage Karl reached the table with a bound and snatched up the revolver. But Millar, with a spring as lithe and agile as a cat, was there beside him, holding the arm with which he would have shot down the man who was pouring insidious poison into his ears—into his soul.
Millar smiled as he looked at the helpless boy before him. Karl released the revolver, and as he replaced it in his pocket, Millar said quietly:
"You see, Karl, a man may kill a man for a lost sovereign."