conceive without a horror more awful
than the horror of death itself. And when I knew this, I knew also on
whom this fate would fall; I looked into my wife's eyes. Even at that
hour, if I had gone out and taken a rope and hanged myself I might have
escaped, and she also, but in no other way. At last I told her all. She
shuddered, and wept, and called on her dead mother for help, and asked
me if I had no mercy, and I could only sigh. I concealed nothing from
her; I told her what she would become, and what would enter in where
her life had been; I told her of all the shame and of all the horror.
You who will read this when I am dead,--if indeed I allow this record
to survive--you who have opened the box and have seen what lies there,
if you could understand what lies hidden in that opal! For one night my
wife consented to what I asked of her, consented with the tears running
down her beautiful face, and hot shame flushing red over her neck and
breast, consented to undergo this for me. I threw open the window, and
we looked together at the sky and the dark earth for the last time; it
was a fine starlight night, and there was a pleasant breeze blowing,
and I kissed her on her lips, and her tears ran down upon my face. That
night she came down to my laboratory, and there, with shutters bolted
and barred down, with curtains drawn thick and close so that the very
stars might be shut out from the sight of that room, while the crucible
hissed and boiled over the lamp, I did what had to be done, and led out
what was no longer a woman. But on the table the opal flamed and
sparkled with such light as no eyes of man have ever gazed on, and the
rays of the flame that was within it flashed and glittered, and shone
even to my heart. My wife had only asked one thing of me; that when
there came at last what I had told her, I would kill her. I have kept
that promise."

* * * * *

There was nothing more. Dyson let the little pocket-book fall, and
turned and looked again at the opal with its flaming inmost light, and
then, with unutterable irresistible horror surging up in his heart,
grasped the jewel, and flung it on the ground, and trampled it beneath
his heel. His face was white with terror as he turned away, and for a
moment stood sick and trembling, and then with a start he leapt across
the room and steadied himself against the door. There was an angry
hiss, as of steam escaping under great pre