I heard a click, which I did not understand then, but which I now know
to have been the head of the hat-pin striking the register.

"Horrified past all power of speech and action, for I saw that he had
intended this blow for me, I cowered against the stairs, waiting for him
to pass out. This he did not do at once, though the delay must have been
short. He stopped long enough by the prostrate form to stir it with his
foot, probably to see if life was extinct, but no longer, yet it seemed
an eternity before I perceived him groping his way over the threshold;
an eternity in which every act of my life passed before me, and every
word and every expression with which he had beguiled me came to rack my
soul and made the horror of this mad awakening greater.

"No thought of her, or of the guilt with which he had forever damned his
soul, came to me in that first moment of misery. _My_ loss, _my_ escape,
and the danger in which I still stood if the least hint reached him of
the mistake he had made, filled my mind too entirely for me to dwell on
any less impersonal theme. His words, for he muttered several in that
short passage out, showed me in what a fools' paradise I had been
revelling, and how certainly I had turned his every thought towards
murder when I seized him in the street and proclaimed myself his wife.
The satisfaction with which he uttered, 'Well struck!' gave little hint
of remorse; and the gloating delight with which he added something about
the devil having assisted him to make it a safe blow as well as a deadly
one, was proof not only of his having used all his cunning in planning
this crime, but of his pleasure in its apparent success.

"That he continued in this frame of mind, and that he never lost
confidence in the precautions he had taken and in the mystery with which
the deed was surrounded, is apparent from the fact that he revisited the
Van Burnam office on the following morning, and hung again on its
accustomed nail the keys of the Gramercy Park house.

"When the front door had closed, and I knew that he had gone away in the
full belief that it was my form he had left lying behind him on that
midnight floor, all the accumulated terrors of the situation came to me
in full force, and I began to think of her as well as of myself, and
longed for courage to approach her or even the daring to call out for
help. But the thought that it was my husband who had committed this
crime held me tongue-tied, and thoug