om, no longer in the house.
Without wonder, without even a feeling of surprise, I looked round. The
place was familiar to me. I was alone in the Museum of our town.

The light flowed along in front of me. I followed, from room to room in
the Museum, where the light led.

First, through the picture-gallery, hung with the works of modern
masters; then, through the room filled with specimens of stuffed
animals. The lion and the tiger, the vulture of the Alps and the
great albatross, looked like living creatures threatening me, in the
supernatural light. I entered the third room, devoted to the exhibition
of ancient armor, and the weapons of all nations. Here the light rose
higher, and, leaving me in darkness where I stood, showed a collection
of swords, daggers, and knives arranged on the wall in imitation of the
form of a star.

The whisper sounded again, close at my ear. It echoed my own thought,
when I called to mind the ways of killing which history had taught me.
It said: "Kill her with the knife."

No. My heart failed me when I thought of the blood. I hid the dreadful
weapons from my view. I cried out: "Let me go! let me go!"

Again, I was lost in darkness. Again, I had no knowledge in me of where
I was. Again, after an interval, the light showed me the new place in
which I stood.

I was alone in the burial-ground of our parish church. The light led me
on, among the graves, to the lonely corner in which the great yew tree
stands; and, rising higher, revealed the solemn foliage, brightened by
the fatal red fruit which hides in itself the seeds of death.

The whisper tempted me again. It followed again the train of my own
thought. It said: "Kill her by poison."

No. Revenge by poison steals its way to its end. The base deceitfulness
of Helena's crime against me seemed to call for a day of reckoning that
hid itself under no disguise. I raised my cry to be delivered from the
sight of the deadly tree. The changes which I have tried to describe
followed once more the confession of what I felt; the darkness was
dispelled for the third time.

I was standing in Helena's room, looking at her as she lay asleep in her
bed.

She was quite still now; but she must have been restless at some earlier
time. The bedclothes were disordered, her head had sunk so low that the
pillow rose high and vacant above her. There, colored by a tender flush
of sleep, was the face whose beauty put my poor face to shame. There,
was the si