of the veil from one of the darkest mysteries of life, and feel the
breath that bore them through the punctures of the thin partition fall
on his cheek with a warmth that made his veins glow and his own breath
come fast and thick.

I once heard a confession of murder from the murderer's lips, as we sat
alone, side by side, on the same sofa. It was of a Sunday morning,
bright, beautiful, and still, one of those days in which earth looks so
pure and lovely that you can hardly believe sin could ever have found a
home thereon. He was a Sicilian, a gentleman by birth and fortune; and
when he first came into the room, apologizing for the intrusion, and
regretting that he was taking up my time with the business of a
stranger, I thought that I had never seen a more intelligent face or
felt more immediately at home with an utter stranger. He began his story
in a low, musical voice,--Italian loses none of its softness in the
mouth of a Sicilian,--and I had followed him through a midnight ride
over a wild and solitary road before I began to suspect how it was to
end. Then came the details: a sudden meeting,--angry words, heating to
madness blood already too hot,--a shot,--a body writhing on the ground
in its own blood. His voice hardly changed, though the tones, perhaps,
were somewhat deeper; but his cheek flushed and his eye kindled, and I
felt such a sickening shudder come over me as I had never felt before.
He was dressed in white, too,--spotless white, as it seemed to me, when
he first came into the room; I had even admired the neatness of his
trousers and waistcoat: but as I looked and listened, big drops of blood
seemed to come out upon them,--a drop for every word, slowly exuding
from some mysterious source, till he was bathed all over in it from head
to foot. A day or two afterwards, I met him upon the Pincian, in the
midst of walkers and riders and all the gay throng of a crowded
promenade at its most crowded hour. But the blood was on him still, and,