it was the soul, the essence of being, that was corrupt to the very core in her.  Had madness seized me when I listened?  I know not.  I know I lay calmly and quietly, certain only that it was well she was to die, certain that, if this failed, she must die in another way before night came again, pitying neither her nor myself in the apathy which held me, believing myself only the instrument of some mighty power which was directing me, and against whose will I could not rebel, if I wished.

For some time I could hear my betrothed moving about in her room; then all was quiet, and she had doubtless lain down to sleep.  By the moonlight that filled my room I consulted my watch after a little while, feeling that I had lost all sense of time, and found that it was half past twelve, and that we had been upstairs over an hour.  I concluded it would hardly be safe to open the door yet; she might not be asleep.  For another half hour I lay patiently waiting.  My mind was not excited, and I reviewed rather the trifling events of my few hours in the city than what had transpired since.

At last I rose, and in the dead quiet I moved softly to the connecting door.  I knew that it was concealed in Amy’s room by a heavy portiere, and as it opened on my side, I had only to hide myself behind the curtain’s folds—­as once before on that previous day, alas!—­and, unguessed by her, watch her at my ease.

The key moved gently in the lock; the lock yielded; a moment more and I had pulled a tiny fold of the curtain aside, and commanded a full view of the silent room.  It was flooded with moonlight, and as light as day.  The bed was curtained, after the English fashion, but I fancied I could hear a slight rustle of the coverings, as though one were roused, and stirring restlessly.  So light was the room that I could discern the articles on the bureau and dressing-table.  A branch of a great elm, which grew at the side of the house, stretched across one window, and its leaves, dancing in the night-breeze, made an ever-changing pattern in shadow on the carpet.  Did ever accepted lover keep such a tryst as mine before?  And she, just waking from her first sleep behind the delicate white curtains of that bed, her tryst was with death, not with love.

From the grove back of the house came a whip-poor-will’s plaintive song, pulsing in a tide of melody on the moonlit air.  Was it a moan from the bed, half-coherent and hopeless in cadence?  Heaven grant that she waken no one until it is too late, I thought fervently.  I heard her step from the bed.  Once I would have hidden my eyes as devoutly as the pagan blinded himself lest he should see Artemis, on whom it was desecration to look, but now I hesitated no more to gaze on her than on any other beautiful hateful thing which I should crush.  Her loveliness stirred neither my senses nor my compassion; both were forever dead, I knew, to woman.  Full in the stream of moonlight she stood, the soft, white folds of her nightdress enveloping her from the throat to the small feet they half hid.  Her eyes were wide open, she was awake.