She was seated with no one near her but a young lady whom sympathetic interest had drawn to her side.  Mr. Roberts stood in one of the windows, and not far from him a man in the museum uniform.

At the authoritative advance of the old detective, the woman, whose eye he had caught, attempted to struggle to her feet, but desisted after a moment of hopeless effort, and sank back in her chair.  There was no pretense in this.  Though gifted with a strong frame, emotion had so weakened her that she was simply unable to stand.  Quite convinced of this, and affected in spite of himself by her look of lofty patience, Mr. Gryce prefaced his questions with an apology—­quite an unusual proceeding for him.

Whether or no she heard it, he could not tell; but she was quite ready to answer when he asked her name and then her place of residence—­saying in response to the latter query: 

“I live at the Calderon, a family hotel in Sixty-seventh Street.  My name”—­here she paused for a second to moisten her lips—­“is Taylor—­Ermentrude Taylor....  Nothing else,” she speedily added in a tone which drew every eye her way.  Then more evenly:  “You will find the name on the hotel’s books.”

“Wife or widow?”

“Widow.”

What a voice! how it reached every heart, waking strange sympathies there!  As the word fell, not a person in the room but stirred uneasily.  Even she herself started at its sound; and moved, perhaps, by the depth of silence which followed, she added in suppressed tones: 

“A widow within the hour.  That’s why you see me still in colors, but crushed as you behold—­killed! killed!”

That settled it.  There was no mistaking her condition after an expression of this kind.  The Curator and Mr. Gryce exchanged glances, and Mr. Roberts, stepping from his corner, betrayed the effect which her words had produced on him, by whispering in the detective’s ear: 

“What you need is an alienist.”

Had she heard?  It would seem so from the quick way she roused and exclaimed with indignant emphasis: 

“You do not understand me!  I see that I must drink my bitter cup to the dregs.  This is what I mean:  My husband was living this morning—­living up to the hour when the clock in this building struck twelve.  I knew it from the joyous hopes with which my breast was filled.  But with the stroke of noon the blow fell.  I was bending above the poor child who had fallen so suddenly at my feet, when the vision came, and I saw him gazing at me from a distance so remote—­across a desert so immeasurable—­that nothing but death could create such a removal or make of him the ghastly silhouette I saw.  He is dead.  At that moment I felt his soul pass; and so I say that I am a widow.”

Ravings?  No, the calm certainty of her tone, the grief, touching depths so profound it had no need of words, showed the confidence she felt in the warning she believed herself to have received.  Though probably not a single person present put any faith in occultism in any of its forms, there was a general movement of sympathy which led Mr. Gryce to pass the matter by without any attempt at controversy, and return to the question in hand.  With a decided modification of manner, he therefore asked her to relate how she came to be kneeling over the injured girl with her hand upon the arrow.