of one hand she smoothed her glove on the
fingers of the other--"I wonder that I didn't think of it long
ago. I ought to have thought of it. I ought to have seen."

"I can't tell you how I hate to have been the----"

"Please don't say any more," she requested in a tone that made
it impossible for a man so timid as he to disobey.

Neither spoke until they were in Fifty-ninth Street; then he,
unable to stand the strain of a silent walk of fifteen blocks,
suggested that they take the car down. She assented. In the car
the stronger light enabled him to see that she was pale in a way
quite different from her usual clear, healthy pallor, that
there was an unfamiliar look about her mouth and her eyes--a
look of strain, of repression, of resolve. These signs and the
contrast of her mute motionlessness with her usual vivacity of
speech and expression and gesture made him uneasy.

"I'd advise," said he, "that you reflect on it all carefully and
consult with me before you do anything--if you think you ought
to do anything."

She made no reply. At the door of the house he had to reach for
her hand, and her answer to his good night was a vague absent
echo of the word. "I've only done what I saw was my duty," said
he, appealingly.

"Yes, I suppose so. I must go in."

"And you'll talk with me before you----"

The door had closed behind her; she had not known he was speaking.

When Spenser came, about two hours later, and turned on the
light in their bedroom, she was in the bed, apparently asleep.
He stood staring with theatric self-consciousness at himself in
the glass for several minutes, then sat down before the bureau
and pulled out the third drawer--where he kept collars, ties,
handkerchiefs, gloves and a pistol concealed under the
handkerchiefs. With the awful solemnity of the youth who takes
himself--and the theater--seriously he lifted the pistol, eyed
it critically, turning it this way and that as if interested in
the reflections of light from the bright cylinder and barrel at
different angles. He laid it noiselessly back, covered it over
with the handkerchiefs, sat with his fingers resting on the edge
of the drawer. Presently he moved uneasily, as a man--on the
stage or in its amusing imitation called civilized life among
the self-conscious classes--moves when he feels that someone is
behind him in a "crucial moment."

He slowly turned round. She had shifted her position so that her
face was now to