preparation for its accomplishment, but that did not mean that the day would ever come when I should actually loose an arrow from this bow against a human breast.  More than once I laughed at the mere idea.

“But the devil knew me better than I knew myself.  Impelled by these same instincts, I answered the letter sent me with the assurance that I would surely see her, but I did not name any day, intuitively knowing that what I dreamed of doing but certainly should not do required a certain set of circumstances not easily to be met with.  Instead, I bade her show herself in the second section of the southern gallery, every Tuesday and Friday at the exact hour of noon.  If at the moment the two hands of the clock came together, she saw me on the lower step of the main staircase, she was to know that I was free to talk and would soon join her.  If she did not see me there, she was to return home and come another day.  She answered that she would come but once, and set the day.  This was startling to my pride, but in a way it brought me a sense of relief.  To wait till all was propitious might mean continual delays.  The very fact of my uncertainty as to whether or not I should have the courage of my wishes at the critical moment made an indefinite prolongation of my present condition undesirable.  Better one straight risk and be done with it.

“I was to wait two weeks.  Why she exacted so long and seemingly unnecessary a delay, I do not know.  Before I saw her, I thought it was from a sheer desire to make me suffer; now I know it was not for that.  However, it did make me suffer, from the alternate weakening and strengthening of my resolve.  When the day came, the most trivial of circumstances would have deterred me from what still had the nature of a dream to me.  Unhappily, everything worked for its fulfillment.  There had never been fewer persons in the building at the noon hour; nor had there been a time during the past two weeks when the Curator was more completely occupied in a spot quite remote from his office.  As I tried the door leading up the little winding staircase to the one back of the tapestry where the bow lay, and found it, just as I had left it, unlocked, I had a sense for the first time that the courage concerning which I had had so many doubts would hold.  At that moment I was a murderer in heart and purpose, whatever I was after or have been since.  As I recognized this fact, I felt my face go pale and my limbs shake from sheer horror of myself.  But this weakness was short-lived and I felt my blood flowing evenly again when having slipped into my place behind the upper pedestal I peered through my peep-hole in a search for her figure in the spot where I had bidden her await me.

  “She was not there, but then it was not quite twelve, though the noon
  hour was so near she must be somewhere in the gallery and liable at any
  minute to cross my line of vision.