ling guest--Correy the attendant--or even the guard
who was never where he was needed and always where he was not! For
anyone to be there of sufficient intelligence to note my face and the
place from which I came meant the end of all things to me. It was not
necessary for this imaginary person to be in the room. To be within
sight of it was enough. But this fear--this horror of impending
retribution--did not make me hesitate or delay my advance a single
instant. Everything depended upon my being one of the crowd when the
first alarm was raised. So with the daring of one who in escaping a
present danger hurls himself knowingly into another equally perilous,
I pushed open the door and entered the office.

"It was empty! Fortune had favored me thus far. Nor was there anyone in
the court beyond, near enough or interested enough to note my presence
or observe any effort I might make at immediate departure. With the
hope riding high within my breast that I should yet reach the street
before my crime was discovered, I made for the nearest exit. But I was
not destined to reach it. When I was only some half a dozen paces from
the great door, Correy's cry rang loudly through the building, with the
result that all egress was shut off, and I was left, with no other aid
than my own assurance, to face my hideous deed with all its appalling
consequences.

"How it served me, you have seen. Steeled by a sense of my own danger,
I was able to confront the woman whom I had so deeply wronged,--whom
I had even endeavored to kill,--and ply her with those questions upon
whose answers depended not only my honor, but my very life.

"My cold-blooded absorption in my own security, and her almost
superhuman devotedness, must have given the Powers cognizant of mortal
lives a new lesson in human nature. Never has a greater contrast been
shown between self-seeking man and self-forgetful woman. But deeply as
I was impressed by the steadfastness and magnanimity of her spirit, nay
by the woman herself, I have been less oppressed by the great debt I
owed her than by the thought, growing more intolerable every day, that
in my frenzied struggle against fate I had cut short the existence of a
young and lovely girl whose right to live was beyond all comparison
superior to my own.

"But now, as the shadows fall thickly about me and the last page of my
dishonorable existence awaits to be