'Is that how I appear to you?' she said at last.

'I'm neutral by creed,' I answered, 'but you don't understand me. Do you want him to live ... for what awaits him?'

'It mustn't,' she stammered a little in her eagerness, 'we must save him.'

'From himself then,' I added, without her confidence. Then as she did not reply, 'It isn't the police we've got to fear, it's his own despair.'

'Because he feels he's a murderer?'

'Partly.'

'And——?'

'Because his heart's dead.'

She lifted her head to say that she must undo what she had done. I wondered how far that can ever be effected. Some gesture must have revealed my doubt.

'You think I can't,' she said, 'and you don't know how much there is to undo. I haven't told you....'