"Forgive me, Banaotovich," I panted. "I don't know what made me----"

He looked at me sadly, almost compassionately. "There is nothing to
forgive," he said, very quietly. "I am all you called me and a thousand
times worse. Now let me finish my story." "You don't need to," I said hastily. "I know all the rest of it." All interest, I am afraid nearly all sympathy, had gone out of me. What
I wanted most of all was to get away from this melancholy citizen with
power and madness in his gray eyes. "No, you don't know quite all of it yet," he insisted. "Perhaps if I
tell you the whole story, even if you can't excuse me--and I don't
deserve your excusing, I don't _want_ your excusing--you can understand
me a little better, and think of me a little more kindly. "There was another woman. I couldn't help it, any more than any of us
can help anything. A fine, sympathetic young woman, who loved me because
she knew I was unhappy. I had been married to the other woman for four
years. We were completely estranged. We could scarcely bear to speak to
each other. I couldn't be easy one moment in the same house with her. I
had a cot in my office out in town because I couldn't even sleep soundly
at home. It was hell. The terror in her eyes made me physically sick. My
wife learned about the other woman. My wife was a devout Catholic, and
there was no possibility of a divorce. I could read in my wife's face
just what went on in her mind. She knew the other woman had become my
only reason for living. And one day I read in her eyes, along with the
terror, a glint of desperate determination. She knew she was in danger,
she knew I had a power that I could exercise when I chose in spite of
all the courts and police and jails in the country. She knew her life
was in danger, and her eyes told me that mine was in danger for that
very reason. I didn't blame her. Half my grief through all the years had
been grief for _her_. But the instinct of self-defense in me was
strong--and--she went--too--like----"

[Illustration: "And she went, too, like the other."] He never finished his sentence. He dropped his head on the table and
began to sob hysterically. I laid a gingerly hand on his shoulder. "Banaotovich," I said unsteadily, "I'm sorry for you----"

He sat up and supported his chin in both hands. "I haven't been as--as
bad as all this sounds like," he said after a while. "Before I was
married a second time, I went to the chief of police and gave myself up. The chief listened to my story--I didn't try to explain it all, as I've
done with you, but just blurted out the main facts; but the longer he
listened the uneasier he became, and when I got through he asked me
nervously if I didn't think I ought to go into a sanitarium for a while. Then he bowed me out in a big hurry. Perhaps if I had told him all the
ins and outs of it, it might have been different----"

"But don't you think he's right about the sanitarium?" "Right? I'm as sane as you are. I've killed three people, a crazy
scoundrel, a hard man, and a pure, innocent woman. But I did it all
because I had to. A sanitarium wouldn't do me or anyone else any good,
and it would be a heavy expense. I have taken the responsibility for
another pure, innocent woman, and I must support her. The war and the
depression swept away my father's fortune, and my present business has
dwindled away till I am making only the barest living. I have applied
for the agency for a big Berlin insurance company, and if I can get it,
along with my other business, I shall be fairly comfortable. But I
understand there is some talk of their sending in a representative from
outside. If they do that, if they take the bread out of my mouth like
that, it won't be good for the outsider!" He was drunk, and his drunkenness was working him into an ugly mood. He
was dangerous, and physical courage was never my strong point. "What is the name of the Berlin company?" I asked timidly. He named the firm I myself worked for. Then he fumbled for his bottle,
and with stern and painful attention set about the difficult and
delicate task of filling his glass again. I muttered something about
being back in a moment, and made for the door. He was too busy to pay
any attention to me. When I had the door safely shut behind me, I sprinted through the rain
to my hotel as if the devil himself were after me....

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a long time before I got over waking up in the middle of the
night with the feeling that an icy, iron-muscled hand was clutching at
my throat. I don't have the experience often any more, but I have never
seen the city of my birth since that awful night. I got out on the
midnight train, and my company obligingly gave me territory on the other
side of Germany. Some time ago I happened to see a notice in the paper to the effect that
a certain patient named G. Banaotovich had died suddenly in the
Staatliche Nervenheilanstalt in Nuremberg. But I have met the name
rather frequently of late, and I think it is a fairly common one. I
didn't investigate. *       *       *       *       *