ile to sever it. This I did, grinding and grinding at it
till the ring finally broke, and I could wrench it off and cast it
away out of sight and, as I hoped, out of my memory also. I
breathed easier when rid of this token, yet choked with terror
whenever a step approached the door. I was clad in my bridal dress,
but not in my bridal veil or ornaments, and naturally Cora, and
then my maid, came to assist me. But I would not let them in. I
was set upon testing the secret of the filigree ball and so
preparing myself for what my conscience told me lay between me and
the ceremony arranged for high noon.

"I did not guess that the studying out of that picture would take
so long. The contents of the ball turned out to be a small
magnifying-glass, and the picture a maze of written words. I did
not decipher it all; I did not decipher the half. I did not need
to. A spirit of divination was given me in that awful hour which
enabled me to grasp its full meaning from the few sentences I did
pick out. And that meaning! It was horrible, inconceivable.
Murder was taught; but murder from a distance, and by an act too
simple to awake revulsion. Were the wraiths of my two ancestors
who had played with the spring hidden in the depths of this old
closet, drawn up in mockery beside me during the hour when I stood
spellbound in the middle of the floor, thinking of what I had just
read, and listening--listening for something less loud than the
sound of carriages now beginning to roll up in front or the stray
notes of the band tuning up below?--less loud, but meaning what?
A step into the empty closet yawning so near--an effort with a
drawer--a--a-- Do not ask me to recall it. I did not shudder
when the moment came and I stood there. Then I was cold as marble.
But I shudder now in thinking of it till soul and body seem
separating, and the horror which envelopes me gives me such a
foretaste of hell that I wonder I can contemplate the deed which,
if it releases me from this earthly anguish, will only plunge me
into a possibly worse hereafter. Yet I shall surely take my life
before you see me again, and in that old house. If it is despair
I feel, then despair will take me there. If it is repentance,
then repentance will suffice to drive me to the one expiation
possible to me--to perish where I caused an innocent man to
perish, and so relieve you of a wife who was never worthy of you
and whom it would be your duty to denounce i