ss of mediaeval Rome to
devise--had sunk into his heart, and was out again, leaving behind it a
pin's puncture through the linen, one infinitesimal bluish-gray spot on
the skin, and death.

Tristrem looked at him. The shirt was not even rumpled. If he had so
much as quivered, the quiver had been imperceptible, and on the knife
there was no trace of blood. It fell from his fingers; he stooped to
pick it up, but his hand trembled so that, on recovering it, he could
not insert the point into the narrow sheath that belonged to it, and,
throwing the bit of embroidered leather in a corner, he put the weapon
in his pocket.

"It was easier than I thought," he mused. "I suppose--h'm--I seem to be
nervous. It's odd. I feared that afterward I should collapse like an
omelette soufflee. And to think that it is done!"

He turned suspiciously, and looked at the body again. No, he could see
it was really done. "And so, this is afterward," he continued. "And to
think that it was here I first saw her. She came in that door there. I
remember I thought of a garden of lilies."

From the dining-room beyond he caught the glimmer of a lamp. He crossed
the intervening space, and on the sideboard he found some decanters. He
selected one, and pouring a little of its contents into a tumbler he
drank it off. Then he poured another portion, and when he had drunk that
too, he went out, not through the sitting-room, but through the hall,
and, picking up the hat which on entering he had thrown on the table, he
left the house.

XVI.

Several thousand years ago a thinker defined virtue as the agreement of
the will and the conscience. If the will were coercible the definition
would be matchless. Unfortunately it is not. Will declines to be
reasoned with; it insists, and in its insistence conscience, horrified
or charmed, stands a witness to its acts.

For a fortnight Tristrem had been married to an impulse against which
his finer nature rebelled. It was not that the killing of such a one as
Weldon was unjustifiable; on the contrary, it was rather praiseworthy
than otherwise. His crime was one for which the noose is too good. But
to Weldon, in earlier days, he had felt as to a brother; and though
affection may die, does it not leave behind it a memory which should
thereafter serve as a protecting shield? It had been the bonds of former
attachment, bonds long loosened, it is true, but of which the old
impress still lingered, that seemed to