"My father—it is true, my father—"
"It is so," he said sharply. He got on to his feet and tramped about the room. After a moment he sat down again, and leaned his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.
"But what of Ewan?" he asked.
"Ewan loves you, Dan, and you have been at fault," said Mona, in broken accents.
"At fault?"
There was a sudden change in his manner. He spoke bruskly, even mockingly, and laughed a short, grating laugh.
"They are taking the wrong way with me, Mona—that's the fact," he said, and now his breast heaved and the words came with difficulty.
Mona was gazing absently out at the window, her head aslant, her fingers interlaced before her. "Oh, Dan, Dan," she murmured in a low tone, "there is your dear, dear father, and Ewan, and—and myself—"
Dan had leapt to his feet again. "Don't turn my eyes into my head, Mona," he said.
He tramped to and fro in the room for a moment and then broke out nervously, "All last night I dreamt such an ugly dream. I dreamt it three times, and, O God! what an ugly dream it was! It was a bad night, and I was walking in the dark, and stumbling first into bogs and then in cart ruts, when all of a sudden a man's hand seized me unawares. I could not see the man, and we struggled long in the darkness, and it seemed as if he would master me. He gripped me by the waist, and I held him by the shoulders. We reeled and fell together, and when I would have risen his knee was on my chest. But a great flood of strength seemed to come to me and I threw him off, and rose to my feet and closed with him again, and at last I was over him, covering him, with his back across my thigh and my hand set hard in his throat. And all this time I heard his loud breathing in the darkness, but never once the sound of his voice. Then instantly, as if by a flash of lightning, I saw the face that was close to mine, and—God Almighty! it was my own face—my own—and it was black already from the pressure of my stiff fingers at the throat."