He carefully removed the blood stains from the narrow table, and pushed it back in its place, behind a screen.  The straps were cut, and consequently useless, so he wrapped them up in a newspaper and threw them into the waste basket.  He cleaned his knife with unusual care, and wiped an ugly stain from his forceps.

Then he took off his linen coat, folded it up, and placed it in the covered basket which held soiled linen from the laboratory.  He washed his hands and copied the notes he had made, for there was blood upon the page.  He tore the original sheet into fine bits, and put the pieces into the waste basket.  Then he put on his cuffs and his coat, and went out of the laboratory.

He was dazed, and did not see that his own self-torture had filled him with primeval lust to torture in return.  He only knew that his brilliant paper must remain forever incomplete, since his services to science were continually unappreciated and misunderstood.  What was one yellow dog, more or less, in the vast economy of Nature?  Was he lacking in discernment, because, as Piper Tom said, he had never been loved by a dog?

He sat down in the library to collect himself and observed, with a curious sense of detachment, that Evelina was walking in the hall instead of in the library, as she usually did when he sat there.

An hour—­or perhaps two—­went by, then, unexpectedly, Ralph came home, having paused a moment outside.  He rushed into the library with his face aglow.

“Look, Dad,” he cried, boyishly, holding it at arm’s length; “see what I found on the steps!  It’s a pearl necklace, with a diamond in the clasp!  Some of the stones are discoloured, but they’re good and can be made right again, I’ve found it, so it’s mine, and I’m going to give it to the girl I marry!”

Anthony Dexter’s pale face suddenly became livid.  He staggered over to Ralph, snatched the necklace out of his hand, and ground the pearls under his heel.  “No,” he cried, “a thousand times, no!  The pearls are cursed!”

Then, for the second time, he fainted.

XVIII

Undine

“It’s almost as good as new!” cried Araminta, gleefully.  She was clad in a sombre calico Mother Hubbard, of Miss Mehitable’s painstaking manufacture, and hopping back and forth on the bare floor of her room at Miss Evelina’s.

“Yes,” answered Doctor Ralph, “I think it’s quite as good as new.”  He was filled with professional pride at the satisfactory outcome of his first case, and yet was not at all pleased with the idea of Araminta’s returning to Miss Mehitable’s, as, perforce, she soon must do.

“Don’t walk any more just now,” he said “Come here and sit down.  I want to talk to you.”

Araminta obeyed him unquestioningly.  He settled her comfortably in the haircloth easy-chair and drew his own chair closer.  There was a pause, then she looked up at him, smiling with childish wistfulness.