o rest of
the murdered man.

CHAPTER XXIX

"Some day."

A week went by after the funeral before Elsa saw Andor again. She had
not purposely avoided him, any more than she had avoided everyone else:
but unlike most girls of her class and of her nationality she had felt a
great desire to be alone during the most acute period of this life's
crisis through which she was passing just now.

At first on that never-to-be-forgotten morning when she woke to her
wedding-day--her white veil and wreath of artificial white roses lying
conspicuously on the top of the chest of drawers, so that her eyes were
bound to alight on them the moment they opened--and saw her mother
standing beside her bed, dishevelled, pale, and obviously labouring
under some terrible excitement, she had been conscious as of an awful
blow on the head, a physical sensation of numbness and of pain.

Even before she had had time to formulate a question she knew that some
terrible calamity had occurred. In jerky phrases, broken by moans and
interjections, the mother had blurted out the news: Eros Bela was
dead--he had been found just now--murdered outside Klara Goldstein's
door--there would be no wedding--Elsa was a widow before she had been a
bride. Half the village was inclined to believe that Ignacz Goldstein
had done the deed in a moment of angry passion, finding Bela sneaking
round his daughter's door when he himself was going away from
home--others boldly accused Andor.

Elsa had said nothing at the time. That same imagined blow on the head
had also deprived her of the power of speech. Fortunately Irma talked so
loudly and so long that she paid no attention to her daughter's silence,
and presently ran out into the village to gather more news.

And Elsa remained alone in the house, save for the helpless invalid in
the next room. She washed and dressed herself quickly and mechanically,
then sat down on her favourite low chair, close beside her crippled
father's knee, cowering there like some little field mouse, attentive,
alert, rigidly still, for very fear of what was to come.

Irma did not come back for two or three hours: when she did it was to
bring the exciting news that Leopold Hirsch had been found hanging to a
beam in his back shop, with the knife wherewith he had killed Eros Bela
lying conspicuously on a table close by.

Elsa felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted from off her
brain. All through these hours the thought of