say, like one who really knows.
"This room is not the place to discuss this matter, is it? If you will
walk back to St. George's with me, I think I can make you see and
feel that I am speaking, not at haphazard, but from observation and
experience."

Her confidence roused my most vivid curiosity. When she left I left with
her. The Le Geyts lived in one of those new streets of large houses on
Campden Hill, so that our way eastward lay naturally through Kensington
Gardens.

It was a sunny June day, when light pierced even through the smoke of
London, and the shrubberies breathed the breath of white lilacs. "Now,
what did you mean by that enigmatical saying?" I asked my new Cassandra,
as we strolled down the scent-laden path. "Woman's intuition is all very
well in its way; but a mere man may be excused if he asks for evidence."

She stopped short as I spoke, and gazed full into my eyes. Her hand
fingered her parasol handle. "I meant what I said," she answered, with
emphasis. "Within one year, Mr. Le Geyt will have murdered his wife. You
may take my word, for it."

"Le Geyt!" I cried. "Never! I know the man so well! A big, good-natured,
kindly schoolboy! He is the gentlest and best of mortals. Le Geyt a
murderer! Im--possible!"

Her eyes were far away. "Has it never occurred to you," she
asked, slowly, with her pythoness air, "that there are murders and
murders?--murders which depend in the main upon the murderer... and also
murders which depend in the main upon the victim?"

"The victim? What do you mean?"

"Well, there are brutal men who commit murder out of sheer
brutality--the ruffians of the slums; and there are sordid men who
commit murder for sordid money--the insurers who want to forestall their
policies, the poisoners who want to inherit property; but have you
ever realised that there are also murderers who become so by accident,
through their victims' idiosyncrasy? I thought all the time while I
was watching Mrs. Le Geyt, 'That woman is of the sort predestined to
be murdered.'... And when you asked me, I told you so. I may have been
imprudent; still, I saw it, and I said it."

"But this is second sight!" I cried, drawing away. "Do you pretend to
prevision?"

"No, not second sight; nothing uncanny, nothing supernatural. But
prevision, yes; prevision based, not on omens or auguries, but on solid
fact--on what I have seen and noticed."

"Explain yourself, oh, prophetess!"

She let the point of her par