I. A. R. Wylie

“ Blackguards all of them. Good night good night.”
Monkhouse paid his reckoning, and with his coat collar turned up about his ears went out through the swinging doors. Outside he paused for a minute beneath a street lamp, and taking some small object from an inner pocket studied it carefully. It was an old-fashioned mourning ring with a strand of fair hair set amidst the valueless pearls. There was nothing to distinguish it from a hundred of its kind, and yet suddenly Brian Monkhouse laughed out loud as though the trinket had conveyed to him an amazing jest of fortune. ”

“ It's a ghastly thing to see oneself walking with a dead woman.”
Monkhouse laid his great hand on the other's shaking arm, and with a gtip that might have dragged a scream from a braver man. But there was not a tremor of the white face to betray even consciousness of the touch.
“You're dreaming,” Monkhouse said, coolly. “And, anyhow, the dead wouldn't haunt you. If they have any regard for law and order, I'm their victim.”
“The dead go their own way,” the other whispered. “They know. Margaret knew. She couldn't drown her memory with her body. ”

“ You don't understand—you're a man of iron—you've never cared for anyone—no one's ever cared for you, eh? She didn't. How could she? You're too damned ugly—too much of the brute—”
He stopped to laugh with a foolish self-complacency, and Monkhouse sat rigidly still, staring stonily in front of him. “But afraid? Good God, no! What have I to be afraid of? Haig? A nincompoop. Who else is left to bother me? There's Margaret's younger sister, Brian. I've thought of her sometimes. Margaret loved her. ”