“Nothing could ever alter my purpose,” she remarked emphatically.

“You cannot tell,” he answered.  “Now, I declare to you most solemnly that if you have me arrested before you do what I ask, you will never cease to repent it all your life.”

“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

He took down his hat from a peg behind the door.

“It is something I have to show you.  We must go to my rooms.  They are only just the other side of the Strand.”

In absolute silence they walked along together.  Joan had but one fear—­the fear which had made her grant his request—­and that she put resolutely behind her.  “God was just,” she muttered to herself again and again, and He would not see her cheated of her vengeance.  From behind her thick veil she looked at Douglas.  He was pale and serious, but there was no look of fear in his face.  Then he had always been brave.  She remembered that from the old days.  He would walk to the scaffold like that.  She shuddered, yet without any thought of relenting.  On the way he met acquaintances and greeted them.  Crossing the Strand he held out his hand to steer her clear of a passing vehicle, but she shrank away with a little gesture of indignation.  When at last they reached the street where his rooms were, and stopped in front of the tall, grimy building she addressed him for the first time.

“What place is this?  What are you bringing me here for?”

“This is where I live,” he answered.  “There is something in my rooms which I must show you.”

She stood still, moody and inclined to be suspicious.

“Why should I trust you?  We are enemies, you and I. There may be evil inside this house for me.”

He threw open the door.

“You are quite safe,” he said curtly, “and you know it.  It is for your good, not mine, that I have brought you here.”

She entered and followed him upstairs.  A vague sense of coming trouble was upon her.  She started when Douglas ushered her into a dimly-lighted room, with a bed in one corner.  A hospital nurse rose to meet them, and looked reproachfully at Douglas.  A man was leaning back amongst the pillows, wild-eyed, and with flaring colour in his cheeks.  When he saw Joan he called out to her.

“You’ve come, then,” he cried.  “You know, Joan, I never meant to do it; upon my soul, I didn’t.”

The nurse bent over him, but he thrust her aside.

“My sister!” he shouted.  “My sister!  I must talk with her.  Listen, Joan.  I struck only one blow.  It was an accident.  I shall swear that it was an accident.  I had the money safe—­I was ready to go.  He was mad to interfere with me, for I was desperate.  It was only one blow—­I wanted to free myself, and down he went like a log.  A hard man, too, and a powerful, but he went down like a log.  I didn’t want his life.  I wanted money, for I was in rags and she wouldn’t look at me.  ’Come to me properly clothed,’ she said.  I, who had ruined myself for her.  Joan, hist!  Come here.”