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250 She stared at the paper in her hand. Then she looked away into the fire.

"I can't get it all into my head," she went on. "I pictured him here, living in luxury, spending the money of which he had promised me a share … and he's dead! That was his body—that unrecognisable thing they found in the canal. You killed him—Douglas! He was so fond of life, too."

"Fond of the things which meant life to him," Philip muttered.

"I should never have believed that you had the courage," she observed ruminatingly. "After all, then, he wasn't faithless. He wasn't the brute I thought him."

She sat thinking for what seemed to him to be an interminable time. He broke in at last upon her meditations.

"Well," he asked, "what are you going to say to Dane?"

"I shan't give you away—at least I don't think so," she promised cautiously. "I shall see. Presently I will make terms, only this time I am not going to be left. I am going to have what I want."

"But he'll be waiting to hear from you!" Philip exclaimed. "He may come here, even."

She shook her head.

"He's gone to Chicago. He can't be back for five days. I promised to wire, but I shan't. I'll wait until he's back. And in the meantime—"

Her fingers closed upon the deposit note. He nodded shortly.

"That's yours," he said. "You can have it all.