"Why didn't he ask her, straight?"
"He did, once, and she pretended not to know what he was talking about. After that he set himself to watch. He pretended to be called away on a sudden business trip. She left, by the next train, for her old home, and went at once to the man with whom she had been corresponding."
"How did you--how did her husband know who the man was?"
"He had once found a letter, destroyed before it was finished, which enabled him to identify the man."
"Was it a love-letter?"
Olden dropped his head on his hand. "Not in terms. But it showed that this man possessed a confidence which she withheld from her husband. In it she spoke of her unhappiness in her married life as of something that he would understand,--something that they had acknowledged between them. Does that seem a little thing to you?"
"No, I can understand. Well, what did he do?"
"Nothing, yet. But I am afraid he may do something. If he should kill the man, would you say he was justified?"
"What would be the use?" asked Lyon, lightly.
"That isn't the question, when your brain is on fire. You see only one thing. The whole world is blotted out, and only that one thing burns before your eyes. I suppose that is the way one feels when going mad. Everything else blotted out, you know, except that one thing that you can't forget night or day,--awake or asleep,--" His voice was trembling with a passion that went beyond control. If Lyon had had any question that the strange man was telling his own story, he could no longer doubt it. Such sympathy is not given to the troubles of a friend.