in her eyes when she kissed me, just as he came in and saw us.  She was frightened at his brutality, and clung to me in terror, when he began swearing in a torrent of passion and calling her the vilest of names.  He struck at us with his cane.  If he had struck me he might yet have been alive; but when I saw the great red welt on Grace’s neck and heard her cry out, I was wild, George.  For an instant, I believe, I could have stamped him into bits, and if it had been my last act on earth I could not have helped striking him.’

“While he spoke, Phil stood with his hand on my shoulder, looking into my eyes, as if he wanted me to judge him, as if he would read in my very look whether I blamed him or not.  I took his hand.

“‘I thought you would understand,’ he went on.  ’I did not know I was going to kill him, but I think I tried to:  I struck him with all my might, Grace threw herself between us and begged me not to hurt him after he had fallen down, and took hold of my arm as if to hold me.  But when she saw the blood running from his temple, where he had struck it on the window-sill, and how still and motionless he lay, she tried to go to him, but could not for weakness and fainting.  I carried her into Mrs. Stanley’s, and have not seen her since, but the doctor says she is very ill.  Herbert was dead when they went into the room after I told them what had happened; and I suppose I had better give myself up to the law.’

“You can have no idea how I felt to see my dearest friend in such a position.  And poor Grace!—­it was much worse for her.  I thought with Phil that she might never survive the shock and misery of it all.  But she did, and came out, weak and broken down as she was, to give her testimony at Phil’s trial.  We had no trouble in getting a jury to acquit him, and he went back to Colorado without bidding Grace good-by, although she would have seen him and was even anxious to do so.  Some persons here, mostly women, pretended to think that there had been more cause for Herbert’s jealousy than was generally supposed; but they belonged to the sanctimonious, hypocritical custom-worshippers.  All really good people remembered what Herbert had been, and refused to see in him a martyr or even a wronged man.

“After that Grace supported herself by dress-making and teaching music; and some two years ago, when we heard that Phil had been killed by a mine’s caving in, and that he had left a little fortune to her and Nannie, I, as his executor and her friend, induced her to take and use it,—­which she did, with simplicity and thankfulness and with her heart full of pity and love for poor Phil.  Yes, poor Phil! those five or six years must have been full of misery to him, and he was probably thankful when the end came.  We never heard from him until after his death.  There was a letter that came to me with the will, that had been written long before.  None but they two know what was in it; and I, for one, do not want to inquire.”