me for ever, and I still
longed for her as madly as at any time. The new idea which I
had got was this. I would kill, not Eleanor, but her friend
and benefactress, and I would do it in such a way as to cast
the stain of guilt on Eleanor herself. You see the plot. Her
life was to be in no real danger. The body was to disappear,
and hence she was to escape a trial. But the horror and
condemnation of the whole world were to be turned upon her,
and then, in her hour of blackest misery, I was to come
forward and say: "I love you still. I believe in your
innocence. Come with me to a foreign land as my wife, and I
will make you happy."

'I need not tell you much more. I came back by road for
greater secrecy, and did not arrive in Porthstone till
eleven at night. I was not tired. Some superhuman power had
taken possession of me, and in all I did I felt as if I were
but a passive instrument in its hands.

'I approached the house at twelve, expecting all its inmates
to be asleep. Just as I was about to enter it the door
opened, and to my astonishment Eleanor herself emerged. I
gazed at her retreating figure with a sort of stupid
fascination for some time, and then recovered myself, and
went in. I had taken off my boots outside, and hence, I
suppose my footsteps sounded light as I went upstairs.

'Well, do you want more? Do you care to hear how I killed
her; how I stabbed her in her sleep, lowered her through the
window, and came down with the jewel-chest in my arms? I had
to mutilate the corpse; the weight would have been too great
for me at once. As it was, I made three journeys before I
had disposed of all, and thrown everything, including the
latchkey, into the sea.

'Then I walked back to Abertaff--twenty miles it was, and I
got there before ten the next morning. I had breakfast, and
was still walking the streets when the news came that the
murder was discovered.

'It overwhelmed me. I assure you, Charles Prescott, on the
oath of a dying man, that I knew not what I did, till that
moment. I was possessed as surely as any of the Galilean
sufferers of old. Madness, your modern science calls it. It
is all the same. I passed out of it into my ordinary state
with a terrible shock, and then I set about playing the part
I h