"A damnable thing was done this afternoon," said Austin. "I see I had my share in it, and I as well as you have to make reparation. Man alive! You are my brother," he cried with an outburst of feeling. "The nearest thing in the world to me. Do you think I could rest happy with the knowledge that a murderous devil is always in your heart, and that it's in my power to--to exorcise it? Do you think the cost matters? Come. Shall we make this bargain? Yes or no?"
"It's easy for you to promise," said Dick. "But when I am gone, how can you resist?"
Austin hesitated for a moment, biting his lips. Then, with the air of a man who makes an irrevocable step in life, he crossed the room and rang the bell.
"Ask Mrs. Holroyd if she will have the kindness to come here for a minute," he said to the servant.
Dick regarded him wonderingly. "What has Mrs. Holroyd to do with our affairs?"
"You'll see," said Austin, and there was silence between them till Katherine came.
She looked from one joyless face to the other, and sat without a word on the chair that Austin placed for her. Her woman's intuition divined a sequel to the afternoon's drama. Some of it she had already learned. For, going earlier into Viviette's room, she had found her white and shaken, still disordered in hair and dress as Dick had left her; and Viviette had sobbed on her bosom and told her with some incoherence that the monkey had at last hit the lyddite shell in the wrong place, and that it was all over with the monkey. So, before Austin spoke, she half divined why he had summoned her.
Her heart throbbed painfully.
"Dick and I," said Austin, "have been talking of serious matters, and we need your help."
She smiled wanly. "I'll do whatever I can, Austin."