He looked, knowing well there was something to be understood, that
stared him in the face. But for the life of him he could not
determine question or answer.

"What is in your bosom?" she asked him.

He put his band to his shirt.

"Draw it out!" she said, as a teacher drills a child.

He drew out the gold-hilted knife with the bronze blade, with which
a man had meant to murder him. He let it lie on the palm of his
hand and looked from it to her and back again. The hilt might have
been a portrait of her modeled from the life.

"Here is another like it," she said, stepping to the bedside. She
drew back the woman's dress at the bosom and showed a knife exactly
like that in King's hand. "One lay on her bosom and one on his
when I found them!" she said. "Now, think again!"

He did think, of thirty thousand possibilities, and of one impossible
idea that stood up prominent among them all and insisted on seeming
the only likely one.

"I saw the knife in your bosom last night," she said, "and laughed
so that I nearly wakened you. Man! Are you stupid? Will that
ready wit of yours not work? Have I bewildered you? Is it my
perfume? My eyes? My jewels? What is it? Think, man! Think!"