"Oh, I--I--took it all in--I let him p-put the noose around his
own neck and tie the knot. Then I hung him." His convulsive
giggling was terrible, forecasting, as it did, his immediate
breakdown.
"Stephen!" she exclaimed, in a shocked tone, convinced that his
mind was going. "You are ill, you need a doctor. I will call
Joceel." She laid her hand on his arm.
But he sniggered: "N-no! No! I'm all right. I t-t-t-t--" A
stuttering-fit seized him; then, with an effort of will, he calmed
himself. "Don't think I'm crazy. I was never more sane, never
cooler, in here." He tapped his head with his finger. "But I'm
tired, that's all, tired of waiting."
"Won't you go to your room and let me call a doctor?"
"Not yet. Wait! He told them what I had done for him, how I'd made
a man of him when he was broke and friendless, how I'd taken him
into my home like one of my family, and then I went him one
better. I acknowledged it all and made them hear it from my lips
too. Then--" He paused, and she steeled herself to witness another
spectacle of his pitiable loss of self-control. But instead he
grew icy and corpse-like, with lips drawn back in a grin. "What do
you think I said? Can't you guess? I couldn't let him get away
with that, could I? I played with him the way you have played with
me.
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