He must leave this place at once.

He would go first

to his house in Upper Berkeley Street, Lady Llwellyn's house! His wife.

Something strange and long forgotten moved within him at that word. What might not his life have been by her side, a life lived in open honour! What had he done with it all? His great name, his fame, were built up slowly by his long and brilliant work. Yet all the time that fair edifice was being undermined by secret workers. The lusts of the flesh were deep below the structure, their hammers were always slowly tapping -- and now it was all over.

He drove up to his own door, unlocked it, and went up the stairs to his own rooms.

Though he had not been near them for weeks, he saw with how keen a pang of regret-that they were swept and tidy, ready for his coming at any time.

He rang the bell.

THE

CHAPTER VIII

DEATH COMING WITH ONE GRACE

HE door opened softly. A long beam of late winter sunshine which had been pouring in at the opposite window and striking the door with its projection of golden powder suddenly framed, played over, and lighted up the figure of Lady Llwellyn.

Sir Robert stood in the middle of the pleasant room and looked at her.

The sunlight showed up the grey pallor of her face, the lines of sorrow and resignation, the faded hair, the thin and bony hands.

"Kate," he said in a weak voice.

It was the first time he had called her by her name for many years.

The tired face lit up with a swift and divine tenderness.

She made a step forward into the room.

He was swaying a little, giddy, it seemed.

She looked him full in the face and saw things there which she had never seen before. A great horror was upon him, a frightful awakening from the long, sensual sloth of his life.

Moving, working, in that great countenance, generally so impassive, uninfluenced by any emotion-at least to her long watchings-except by a moody irritation, she saw Doom, Fate, the Call of the Eumenides.

It came to the poor woman in a sudden wave of illuminating certainty.

She knew the end had come.

And yet, strangely enough, she felt nothing but a quickening of the pulses, a swift embracing pity which was almost a joy in its breaking away of barriers.

If the end were here, it should be together at last together.

For she loved this cruel, sinning man, this lover of light loves, this man of purple, fine linen, and the sparkling deadly wines of life.

"Kate!"

He said it once more.

Her manner changed. Shrinking, timidity, fear, fled for ever. In her overpowering rush of protecting love all the diffidences of temperament, all the bars which he had forced her to build around her instincts, were swept utterly away.

Well, we have

She went quickly up to him, folded him in her arms. 66 Robert! she said, "poor boy, the end has come to it all. I knew it must come some day. not been happy. I wonder if you have been happy? No, I don't think so. But now, Robert, you have me to comfort you with my love once more, my poor Robert, once more, as in the old, simple days when we were young."

She led him to a couch.

He trembled violently. His decision of movement seemed to have gone. His purpose of flight had for

the moment become obscure.

And now, into this man's heart came a remorse and regret so awful, a realisation so sudden and strong, so instinct with a pain for which there is no name, that everything before his eyes turned to burning fire.

The flames of his agony burnt up the veils which had for so long obscured the truth. They shrivelled and vanished.

Too late, too late, he knew what he had lost.

The last agony wrenched his brain round again to another and more terrible contemplation.

His thoughts were in other and outside hands, which pulled his brain from one scene to another as a man moves the eye of the camera obscura to different fields of view.

Incredible as it may seem, for the first time Llwellyn realised what he had done-realised, that is, in its entirety, the whole horror and consequences of that action of his which was to kill him now.

He had not been able to see the magnitude and extent of his crime before-either at the time when it was proposed to him, except at the first moment of speech, or after its committal.

His brain and temperament had been wrapped round in the hideous fact of sensuality, which deadens and destroys sensation.

And now, with his wife's thin arms round him, her withered cheek pressed to his, her words of glad love, a martyr's swan song in his ears, he saw, knew, and understood.

Through the terror of his thoughts her words began to penetrate.

"I know, Robert-husband, I know. The end is here. But what has happened? Tell me everything, that I may comfort you the more. Tell me, Robert, for the dear Christ's sake!"

At those words the man stiffened. “For the dear Christ's sake!"

Suddenly, in the disorder and tumult of his tortured brain, came, quite foolishly and inconsequently, a quotation from an old French romance-full of satire and the keen cynicism of a period—which he had been reading :

"Tres volontiers,' repartit le démon.

• Vous aimez les tableaux changeans;
Je veux vous contenter.'

Yes! the devil who was torturing him now had shown him many moving aspects of life. Les tableaux changeans!

But now, at last, here was the worst moment of all. "For the dear Christ's sake, tell me, Robert!"

How could he tell this?

This was his last moment of peace, his last chance of any help or hope.

He had begun to cling to her, to mingle foolish tears with hers-the while his fired brain ranged all the halls of agony.

For if he told her-this gentle Christian lady, to whom he had been so unkind-then she would never touch him more.

The last hours-there was but little time remainingwould be alone.

ALONE!

This new revelation that her love was still his, wonder of mysteries! this came at the last moments to aid him. A last grace before the running waters closed over him. Was he to give this up?

The thought of flight lay like a wounded bird in his brain. It crept about it like some paralysed thing. Not yet dead, but inactive. Though he knew how terribly the moments called to him, yet he could not act.

The myriad agonies he was enduring now, agonies so various and great that he knew Hell had none greater, these, even these were alleviated by the wonder of his wife's love.

The terrible remorse that was knocking at his heart could not undo that.

He clung to her.

"Tell me all about it, Robert. I will forgive you,