onvulsion passed over
his grim face, and he fell back in his chair. At the same instant the
bookcase at which Holmes pointed swung round upon a hinge, and a woman
rushed out into the room. "You are right!" she cried, in a strange
foreign voice. "You are right! I am here."

She was brown with the dust and draped with the cobwebs which had come
from the walls of her hiding-place. Her face, too, was streaked with
grime, and at the best she could never have been handsome, for she had
the exact physical characteristics which Holmes had divined, with, in
addition, a long and obstinate chin. What with her natural blindness,
and what with the change from dark to light, she stood as one dazed,
blinking about her to see where and who we were. And yet, in spite of
all these disadvantages, there was a certain nobility in the woman's
bearing, a gallantry in the defiant chin and in the upraised head, which
compelled something of respect and admiration. Stanley Hopkins had laid
his hand upon her arm and claimed her as his prisoner, but she waved
him aside gently, and yet with an overmastering dignity which compelled
obedience. The old man lay back in his chair, with a twitching face, and
stared at her with brooding eyes.

"Yes, sir, I am your prisoner," she said. "From where I stood I could
hear everything, and I know that you have learned the truth. I confess
it all. It was I who killed the young man. But you are right, you who
say it was an accident. I did not even know that it was a knife which
I held in my hand, for in my despair I snatched anything from the table
and struck at him to make him let me go. It is the truth that I tell."

"Madam," said Holmes, "I am sure that it is the truth. I fear that you
are far from well."

She had turned a dreadful colour, the more ghastly under the dark
dust-streaks upon her face. She seated herself on the side of the bed;
then she resumed.

"I have only a little time here," she said, "but I would have you to
know the whole truth. I am this man's wife. He is not an Englishman. He
is a Russian. His name I will not tell."

For the first time the old man stirred. "God bless you, Anna!" he cried.
"God bless you!"

She cast a look of the deepest disdain in his direction. "Why should you
cling so hard to that wretched life of yours, Sergius?" said she. "It
has done harm to many and good to none--not even to yourself. However,
it is not for me to cause the frail thread to be snapped before God