"She must make the best of it now," said he, gazing at the fire. "She is not worse off than others, come to that." And he lolled among the cushions, gazing into the fire, with a hard and cruel look on his countenance, on which the stamp of sensuality was unmistakably impressed.

It was a large and luxuriously-furnished apartment, with everything so arranged as to minister to the senses and afford them the fullest gratification which suggestions could impart.

But Sir Edward, lolling by the fire this evening, experienced little satisfaction in his luxurious surroundings: the eroding tooth of thought they could no way quiet; and it was the irritation of this that he most desired to have allayed.

He lighted a cigar, and began to smoke vigorously, leaning back the while and contemplating the smoke-clouds that drifted round in swirling folds and spirals, an occasional ring mounting airily over all.

Smoking away steadily, cigar after cigar—for he was an insatiable smoker as he was insatiable in everything—Sir Edward seemed presently to be almost hidden among the smoke-wreaths, which had now thickened in the room with unexampled rapidity.

At first he felt inclined to ring for a servant and have the windows opened to let in a breath of air, but there was a certain amount of interest in watching the floating veils of smoke; and, besides, in the mere act of idly watching these he could let certain vivid tableaux, with which Memory was amusing him, drift beyond the range of his attention, he hoped. So he lay back, letting the smoke thicken in the atmosphere, while he followed the fantastic wreaths lazily with his eyes.

It was almost as if he were dozing as he lay there; for he could have sworn that in the chair on the opposite side of the fireplace he perceived a grey old fogey reclining among the cushions, yet with deep-sunken eyes fixed watchfully on his face.

It was really absurd to have an utter stranger intrude his company on him in this unceremonious manner, and Sir Edward felt inclined to question him sharply, and, if need be, have him turned out neck and crop.

But instead of taking up the intended rÔle of inquisitor, he found himself reduced ignominiously to the rÔle of the questioned one.

"Where were you thinking of going to-night?" asked the Visitor. "To the theatre, or the opera, or to that 'private club' we know of?" And the Visitor looked at him with a glance of quiet intelligence which Sir Edward somehow felt powerless to resent.

"I was thinking...."

"Of going with me? Quite right!" replied the Visitor. "With me you shall go: unless we can come to terms together. In which case, possibly, I may leave you behind for a time."

Sir Edward ceased to smoke: and his hands trembled on his knees.

But he made no movement, and uttered no protest. Before the glance of his visitor he quailed and was dumb.

"Ruth Medwin, I presume, must bear her disgrace as best she can? You will neither recognize her, nor make her an allowance, I understand."

"I think I have changed my mind...."

"Too late," said the Visitor. "After having seen me you can change your mind no more."

Sir Edward lay motionless among the cushions of his chair.

"I should like ... if you will allow me...." he began feebly.

"I can allow you only one choice: and that a peremptory one. Will you go with me instantly—I think you know me—or shall I call for you again on any terms I care to fix?"

"Will your terms be as pitiless...."

"You shall hear them, if you please."

Sir Edward sank deeper among the soft cushions: his whole life concentrated in the watchful stare with which he fixed his eyes on his visitor's face.

"Shall I take you with me now to undergo your punishment—and, I need scarcely tell you, it will not be a light one—or would you prefer a delay before you accompany me: a period of expiation, in some form I may decide on, with a hope of a reduction in your punishment at the end?"

"A delay—a period of expiation, for God's sake!"

"You are certain you prefer it?"

"I implore it! I entreat it! For God's sake, grant me a respite!"

"Be it so."

II.

The soul that had been Sir Edward's sickened with disgust.

It was located in the body of a miserable cab-horse; one of the sorriest hacks in the East End of London, and practically fit only for the knacker, one would have said.

It was a life the human soul found inexpressibly hateful. If this were expiation, it was in a purgatory indeed. But in a purgatory of filth and of disgusting sensations, instead of in a torturing purgatory of fire.

To be lashed with the whip, and galled excruciatingly with the harness; to have the bit between the teeth, or tugging at the jaws unmercifully; and to have the blinkers ever blotting out the vision of the world: to strain every sinew, and have the service accepted thanklessly; to be tortured with discomfort, and to work absolutely without reward—it was a life devoid of even the meanest compensations: loathsome, and in every way abhorrent to thought.

The horses, and other animals he met in the streets, he might have communicated with in some way or other, but his driver—a drunken, quarrelsome fellow—was always tugging at the bit or brandishing the whip; and if the poor animal even tried to turn his head, he was belaboured as brutally as if he had swerved or fallen asleep.

There was no chance even of rubbing noses at the drinking-troughs, or of laying his head on the neck of a companion at the stand. And whatever might be taking place in the streets through which he was passing, he was debarred from bestowing on it even the most casual attention.

His mental activity was ignored, or trampled on, with an indifference that was never once relaxed or relieved.

His life was a horror unexampled in its profundity. The cruel debasement and defilement of it penetrated so deeply that he repented bitterly of the choice into which he had been betrayed. He would infinitely have preferred suffering among his equals in hell.

A year of this life was as much as he could endure. One day he stumbled across a tram-line, and, falling, broke his leg—hopelessly snapping the tendon, and otherwise injuring himself—and he was carted off to the knackers to receive his coup de grÂce.

A moment or two before he was killed, the eyes of the animal lighted up with a strangely human expression—which was succeeded by a look of the most unappeasable despair.

Evidently he had again seen the grey old man.

But the Visitor's communication to him remained unrevealed, and it was probably torturing him still when he ... died?