white negligees, was stretched on the Turkish divan by the open fireplace, filled now with an enormous bowl of flowers.  Her arms were raised above her head, and there was an enigmatic smile on her lips; her face had the sleepy wisdom of the Sphinx.  Kate was crouched on the floor by her side, listening eagerly.  Now and then she would say:  “Oh! how clever you were!” “So he never guessed.”  “Yes, yes, and then, what did he say then?” urging her on with a feverish greed for details, which my affianced did not disdain to impart lazily, the faint, contemptuous smile always upon the pink lips I had not ventured to kiss with ardor.

I did not know that I was listening, as I stood there, panting for breath, my hand clutched against my throat, lest I should groan in my agony.  Phrase by phrase, I heard the whole dreadful story, told, without the shadow of regret or repentance, by the woman in whom I believed as I believed in Heaven, told with cynical laughter instead, and impatient contempt of the innocence, sullied years ago by Hilyard—­the friend I trusted and loved.  I could draw to-day exactly the pattern of that portiere, the curling leaves of dull crimson, the intricate tracery of gold thread.

“And Lewis?” suggested Kate, at length.

Amy rolled her head restlessly on the pillow.  The soft golden hair was loosened from its pins, and fell over the slender shoulders.  “Oh! well, one must marry, you know,” she said, indifferently.

I moved away silently and unnoticed.  I went to brush my hair aside from my wet forehead, and noticed, parenthetically, that my hand was soiled with blood, where my nails had bitten the palm.  With the death of love and faith in me had come an immense capacity for cunning, concealment and cruelty, the trinity of power that abides in certain beasts.  Came also a dull purpose, growing each moment in strength.

I do not remember that I felt a single throe of expiring love, the love that had filled my heart to the brim.  An immeasurable nausea of disgust overcame me, to the exclusion of other ideas, a fixed sense that a thing so dangerous in its angelic disguise, so poisonous and loathsome, must not remain on earth; this jest of Satan must be removed lest it contaminate all with whom it came in contact.  Yet did there live any being uncontaminated already?  Were not all vile, even as she was vile?  My brain reeled.  Surely to the eyes of any beholder, she was the incarnation of purity!  That which animated me was not a personal sense of grievance so much as the inborn, natural desire one feels to exterminate a pest, to crush a reptile, the more dangerous that it crawls through flowers to kill.  As I have said, I felt power for strategy, unknown to my nature before, rising in me.  Certain ideas were suggested to me, on which I acted with coolness and promptness.  I felt like a minister of God’s will, charged with destruction.  It no longer remained for me to decide what to do:  some power dwelling in me impelled me, against which I could not, even if I would, have struggled.