he glass of wine at supper-time?
It was a risk to remain still--it was a risk to move! He stood as
helpless even as the helpless creature near him. That low, ceaseless,
dumb moaning, smote so painfully on his heart, roused up so fearfully
the rude superstitious fancies lying in wait within him, in connection
with the lost and dead Mary Grice, that the sweat broke out on his face,
the coldness of sharp mental suffering seized on his limbs, the fever of
unutterable expectation parched up his throat, and mouth, and lips; and
for the first time, perhaps, in his existence, he felt the chillness of
mortal dread running through him to his very soul--he, who amid perils
of seas and wildernesses, and horrors of hunger and thirst, had played
familiarly with his own life for more than twenty years past, as a child
plays familiarly with an old toy.

He knew not how long it was before the dumb moaning seemed to grow
fainter; to be less fearfully close to him; to change into what sounded,
at one moment, like a shivering of her whole body; at another, like a
rustling of her garments; at a third, like a slow scraping of her hands
over the table on the other side of her, and of her feet over the floor.
She had summoned courage enough at last to move, and to grope her way
out--he knew it as he listened. He heard her touch the edge of the
half-opened door; he heard the still sound of her first footfall on the
stone passage outside; then the noise of her hand drawn along the wall;
then the lessening gasps of her affrighted breathing as she gained the
stairs.

When she was gone, and the change and comfort of silence and solitude
stole over him, his power of thinking, his cunning and resolution began
to return. Listening yet a little while, and hearing no sound of any
disturbance among the sleepers in the house, he ventured to light one of
his matches; and, by the brief flicker that it afforded, picked his
way noiselessly through the lumber in the studio, and gained the garden
door. In a minute he was out again in the open air. In a minute more,
he had got over the garden wall, and was walking freely along the lonely
road of the new suburb, with the Hair Bracelet safe in his pocket.

At first, he did not attempt to take it out and examine it. He had not
felt the slightest scruple beforehand; he did not feel the slightest
remorse now, in connection with the Bracelet, and with his manner
of obtaining possession of it. Callous, however, as he