“By Gad!” exclaimed the clergyman breathlessly, and with increasing excitement, “then I feel I must tell you⁠—what has been given to me in confidence⁠—that Sangree has in him an admixture of savage blood⁠—of Red Indian ancestry⁠—”

“Let us stick to our supposition of a man as described,” the doctor stopped him calmly, “and let us imagine that he has in him this admixture of savage blood; and further, that he is wholly unaware of his dreadful physical and psychical infirmity; and that he suddenly finds himself leading the primitive life together with the object of his desires; with the result that the strain of the untamed wild-man in his blood⁠—”

“Red Indian, for instance,” from Maloney.

“Red Indian, perfectly,” agreed the doctor; “the result, I say, that this savage strain in him is awakened and leaps into passionate life. What then?”

He looked hard at Timothy Maloney, and the clergyman looked hard at him.