Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/140

 moment that any one crosses the division between sanity and insanity it means that they can control their brain no longer, that they are dominated by some desire or ambition or lust or terror that nothing can stop, no fear of the law, of public shame, of losing social caste. Crispin is mad, and Hesther, whom I love more than anything in this world and the next, is in his hands completely and absolutely. They go abroad to-morrow morning where no one can touch them.

"The time's been so short, and I've not been suffciently [sic] clever to give you any clear idea of the man himself. I've got practically no facts. You can't say that his stroking an old woman's neck is a fact that proves anything. All the same I believe you've seen enough yourself to know that it isn't all imagination, and that the girl is in terrible peril. My God, sir," the boy's voice was shaking, "before the war there were all sorts of things that didn't seem possible, we knew that they couldn't exist outside the books of the story-tellers. But the war's changed all that. There's nothing too horrible, nothing too beastly, nothing too bad to be true—yes, and nothing too fine, nothing too sporting.

"And this thing is quite simple. There are those two madmen and my girl in their hands, and only to-night to get her out of them.

"I must tell you something more," he went on more quietly. "I've been making desperate at-