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was faint from want of food, though she had no idea of it.

“Wait a moment!” Tony was gone like a flash, and back almost instantly with a glass of wine. She drank it gratefully, and said steadily, after a minute or two, “I’m all right now; I can go on.”

Tony, his fears kindled afresh, found he could not endure to watch that wan, childish face. He was afraid to meet her eyes, afraid of the tone of her voice, afraid with all his soul of her next words. He sat sideways on his chair and stared at the wall while Pamela proceeded.

“He—Alick Power—you see, he cared for me, but I could never have loved him—never—even if he had gone about things more like—other men. But he terrified me, Tony—he was so violent and so—Oh!” she cried, for it was so painful to have to describe this man she was trying with all her strength to forget, yet she must make Tony understand everything quite clearly—“do you know the sort of man he was?”

“Yes,” Tony told her, with grim lips, “I think I know the sort of man he was.”

So the sordid story went on, quite coherently now. Tony did not interrupt or look at her, he was thinking harder than he had in all his life before, dreading each word as it came, and wondering, racking his brain till it felt as if there were cords stretched across it, to discover some way of helping her. Things were worse than ever, however the ugly tale were to end, and she must go back. Even before then, who was to take care of her? Poor, pretty Pamela—an unlikely-looking bachelor-cousin of twenty-three would be a good deal worse than no protection to her in the eyes of the world. As for pretending that they were brother and sister, that would never do, they were utterly unlike each other in every way, “though we might be,” he reflected, “only people would never believe it.’