“Why, she committed suicide last night by taking laudanum,” answered Geary, “and nobody knows why.  She didn’t leave any message or letter or anything of the kind.  It’s a fearful thing to happen so suddenly, but it seems she has been very despondent and broke up about something or other for a week or two.  They found her in her room last night about ten o’clock lying across her table with only her wrapper on.  She was unconscious then, and between one and two she died.  She was unconscious all the time.  Well, I can’t stop any longer, Van; I’ve an appointment downtown.  I was just going past the house and I thought I would run up and speak to you about Ida.  I’ll see you again pretty soon and we’ll talk this over.”

Mr. Corkle politely attended Geary to the head of the stairs, then went back to Vandover’s room, and after blowing under the crack of the bathroom door to see if his master was still there returned to the wolfskin and sat down on his short tail and yawned.  He was impatient to see Vandover and thought he stayed in his bath an unnecessarily long time.  He went up to the door again and listened.  It was very still inside; he could not hear the slightest sound, and he wondered again what could keep Vandover in there so long.  He had too much self-respect to whine, so he went back to the wolfskin and curled up in the sun, but did not go to sleep.

By and by, after a very long time, the bathroom door swung open, and Vandover came out.  He had not dried himself and was naked and wet.  He went directly to the table in the centre of the room and picked up the morning paper, looking for the article of which Geary had spoken.  At first he could not find it, and then it suddenly jumped into prominence from out the gray blur of the print on an inside page beside an advertisement of a charity concert for the benefit of a home for incurable children.  There was a picture of Ida taken from a photograph like one that she had given him, and which even then was thrust between the frame and glass of his mirror.  He read the article through; it sketched her life and character and the circumstances of her death with the relentless terseness of the writer cramped for space.  According to this view, the causes of her death were unknown.  It had been remarked that she had of late been despondent and in ill health.

Vandover threw the paper down and straightened up, naked and dripping, putting both hands to his head.  In a low voice under his breath he said: 

“What have I done?  What have I done now?”

Like the sudden unrolling of a great scroll he saw his responsibility for her death and for the ruin of that something in her which was more than life.  What would become of her now?  And what would become of him?  For a single brief instant he tried to persuade himself that Ida had consented after all.  But he knew that this was not so.  She had consented, but he had forced her consent; he was none the less guilty.  And then in that dreadful moment when he saw things in their true light, all the screens of conventionality and sophistry torn away, the words that young Haight had spoken came back to him.  No matter if she had consented, it was his duty to have protected her, even against herself.