----".

"What is it?" asked Phillida, for his eyes had dilated as he read, and he
was breathing hard.

"He practically says he was going to commit suicide at daybreak! He's
said so once already, but now he says it in so many words!"

"Well, we know he didn't do it," said Phillida, as though she found a
crumb of comfort in the thought.

"I'm not so sure about that."

"Go on reading it aloud. I can bear it if that's the worst."

"But it isn't, Phillida. I can see it isn't!"

"Then let us read it together. I'd rather face it with you than
afterwards all by myself. We've seen each other through so much, surely
we can--surely----"

Her words were swept away in a torrent of tears, and it was with dim eyes
but a palpitating heart that Pocket looked upon the forlorn drab figure of
the slip of a girl; for as yet, despite her pretext to Mr. Upton, she had
taken no thought for her mourning, that unfailing distraction to the
normally bereaved, but had put on anything she could find of a neutral
tint; and yet it was just her dear disdain of appearance, the intimate
tears gathering in her great eyes, unchecked, and streaming down the fresh
young face, the very shabbiness of her coat and skirt, that made her what
she was in his sight. Outside, the rain had stopped, and Trafalgar Square
was drying in the sun, that streamed in through the open window of the
hotel sitting-room, and poured its warm blessing on the two young heads
bent as one over the dreadful document.

This was the part they read together, now in silence, now one and now the
other whispering a few sentences aloud:--.

"What I have called my life's ambition demands but little explanation
here. I have never made any secret of it, but, on the contrary, I have
given full and frank expression to my theories in places where they are
still accessible to the curious. I refer to my signed articles on spirit
photography in _Light Human Nature_, _The Occult Review_ and other
periodicals, but particularly to the paper entitled 'The Flight of the
Soul,' in _The Nineteenth Century and After_ for January of last year.
The latter article contains my last published word on the matter which has
so long engrossed my mind. It took me some months to prepare and to
write, and its reception did much to drive me to the extreme measures I
have since employed. Treated to a modicum of serious criticism by the
scientific press, but more generally received with ignorant and intol