face. It was a lie, she cried in shrill,
penetrating tones. August couldn't do such a thing. Kill him quickly!

The other voice was faint, McGeorge said, hardly more than a sigh; but
Lizzie Tuoey had heard it before. She asserted that there was no chance
for a mistake.

"O God!" it breathed. "Mummer!"

This much is indisputable, that Mrs. Kraemer died convulsively in the
Meeker hall. Beyond that I am congenitally incapable of belief. I asked
McGeorge directly if it was his contention that, through Stepan's
blunder, the unfortunate imperialistic lady, favored with a vignette of
modern organized barbarity, had seen Mrs. Doothnack's son in place of
her own.

He didn't, evidently, think this worth a reply. McGeorge was again lost
in his consuming dread of perpetual being.

II. THE GREEN EMOTION

Virtually buried in a raft of ethical tracts of the Middle Kingdom, all
more or less repetitions of Lao-tsze's insistence on heaven's quiet way,
I ignored the sounding of the telephone; but its continuous bur--I had
had the bell removed--triumphed over my absorption, and I answered
curtly. It was McGeorge. His name, in addition to the fact that it
constituted an annoying interruption, recalled principally that, caught
in the stagnant marsh of spiritism, he had related an absurd fabrication
in connection with the Meeker circle and the death of Mrs. August
Kraemer.

Our acquaintance had been long, but slight. He had never attempted to
see me at my rooms, and for this reason only--that his unusual visit
might have a corresponding pressing cause--I directed Miss Maynall, at
the telephone exchange, to send him up. Five minutes later, however, I
regretted that I had not instinctively refused to see him. It was then
evident that there was no special reason for his call. It was
inconceivable that any one with the least knowledge of my prejudices and
opinions would attempt to be merely social, and McGeorge was not
without both the rudiments of breeding and good sense.

At least such had been my impression of him in the past, before he had
come in contact with the Meekers. Gazing at him, I saw that a different
McGeorge was evident, different even from when I had seen him at the
Italian restaurant where he had been so oppressed by the fear not of
death, but of life. In the first place, he was fatter and less nervous,
he was wearing one of those unforgivable soft black ties with flowing
ends, and he had changed from Virginia cigare