doubts. It might be the veriest fool business, but my mind was
disturbed and must be set at ease. Nothing else seemed so important,
yet I was not without anxiety for the lovely and delicate woman
wandering the snow-covered roads in the teeth of a furious gale, any
more than I was dead to the fact that I should never forgive myself if
I allowed the man to escape whom I believed to be hiding somewhere in
the rear of this house.

I had a hunt for the candlestick and a still longer one for the candle,
but finally I recovered both, and, lighting the latter, felt myself, for
the first time, more or less master of the situation.

Rapidly regaining the room in which my interest was now centred, I set
the candlestick down on the dresser, and approached the lounge. Hardly
knowing what I feared, or what I expected to find, I tore off one of the
cushions and flung it behind me. More cushions were revealed--but that
was not all.

Escaping from the edge of one of them I saw a shiny tress of woman's
hair. I gave a gasp and pulled off more cushions, then I fell on my
knees, struck down by the greatest horror which a man can feel. Death lay
before me--violent, uncalled-for death--and the victim was a woman. But
it was not that. Though the head was not yet revealed, I thought I knew
the woman and that she--Did seconds pass or many minutes before I lifted
that last cushion? I shall never know. It was an eternity to me and I am
not of a sentimental cast, but I have some sort of a conscience and
during that interval it awoke. It has never quite slept since.

The cushion had not concealed the hands, but I did not look at
them--I did not dare. I must first see the face. But I did not twitch