guest—­Correy the attendant—­or even the guard who was never where he was needed and always where he was not!  For anyone to be there of sufficient intelligence to note my face and the place from which I came meant the end of all things to me.  It was not necessary for this imaginary person to be in the room.  To be within sight of it was enough.  But this fear—­this horror of impending retribution—­did not make me hesitate or delay my advance a single instant.  Everything depended upon my being one of the crowd when the first alarm was raised.  So with the daring of one who in escaping a present danger hurls himself knowingly into another equally perilous, I pushed open the door and entered the office.

“It was empty!  Fortune had favored me thus far.  Nor was there anyone in the court beyond, near enough or interested enough to note my presence or observe any effort I might make at immediate departure.  With the hope riding high within my breast that I should yet reach the street before my crime was discovered, I made for the nearest exit.  But I was not destined to reach it.  When I was only some half a dozen paces from the great door, Correy’s cry rang loudly through the building, with the result that all egress was shut off, and I was left, with no other aid than my own assurance, to face my hideous deed with all its appalling consequences.

“How it served me, you have seen.  Steeled by a sense of my own danger, I was able to confront the woman whom I had so deeply wronged,—­whom I had even endeavored to kill,—­and ply her with those questions upon whose answers depended not only my honor, but my very life.

“My cold-blooded absorption in my own security, and her almost superhuman devotedness, must have given the Powers cognizant of mortal lives a new lesson in human nature.  Never has a greater contrast been shown between self-seeking man and self-forgetful woman.  But deeply as I was impressed by the steadfastness and magnanimity of her spirit, nay by the woman herself, I have been less oppressed by the great debt I owed her than by the thought, growing more intolerable every day, that in my frenzied struggle against fate I had cut short the existence of a young and lovely girl whose right to live was beyond all comparison superior to my own.

“But now, as the shadows fall thickly about me and the last page of my dishonorable existence awaits to be turned, my mortal wound is this:  that I must leave to loneliness and unspeakable grief the great-souled woman who has seen into the heart of my crime and yet has forgiven me.  All else of anguish or dread is swallowed up in this one over-mastering sorrow.  To her my heart’s thanks are here given; to her my last word is due.  May she find in it all that her soul calls for in this hour of supreme disaster:  repentance equal to my sin, and a recognition of her worth, which, late as it is for her comfort, may lead to her acceptance of the consolation yet to be meted out to her from eternal sources.”

That was all.  The pen dropped from his hand and he sat inert, almost pulseless, in the desolation of a despair known only to those who, at a blow, have sunk from the height of public applause into the depths of irretrievable ignominy.