She started back, dropping his hands as she did so.  With quick intuition she saw that he must be left to himself if he were to meet this blow without succumbing.  The body must have freedom if the spirit would not go mad.  Conscious, or perhaps not conscious, of his release from her restraining hand, albeit profiting by it, he staggered to his feet, murmuring that word of doom:  “Wound! wound! my darling died of a wound!  What kind of a wound?” he suddenly thundered out.  “I cannot understand what you mean by wound.  Make it clear to me.  Make it clear to me at once.  If I must bear this grief, let me know its whole depth.  Leave nothing to my imagination or I cannot answer for myself.  Tell it all, Doris.”

And Doris told him: 

“She was on the mezzanine floor of the hotel where she lives.  She was seemingly happy and had been writing a letter—­a letter to me which they never forwarded.  There was no one else by but some strangers—­good people whom one must believe.  She was crossing the floor when suddenly she threw up her hands and fell.  A thin, narrow paper-cutter was in her grasp; and it flew into the lobby.  Some say she struck herself with that cutter; for when they picked her up they found a wound in her breast which that cutter might have made.”

“Edith? never!”

The words were chokingly said; he was swaying, almost falling, but he steadied himself.

“Who says that?” he asked.

“It was the coroner’s verdict.”

“And she died that way—­died?”

“Immediately.”

“After writing to you?”

“Yes.”

“What was in that letter?”

“Nothing of threat, they say.  Only just cheer and expressions of hope.  Just like the others, Mr. Brotherson.”

“And they accuse her of taking her own life?  Their verdict is a lie.  They did not know her.”

Then, after some moments of wild and confused feeling, he declared, with a desperate effort at self-control:  “You said that some believe this.  Then there must be others who do not.  What do they say?”

“Nothing.  They simply feel as you do.  They see no reason for the act and no evidence of her having meditated it.  Her father and her friend insist besides, that she was incapable of such a horror.  The mystery of it is killing us all; me above others, for I’ve had to show you a cheerful face, with my brain reeling and my heart like lead in my bosom.”

She held out her hands.  She tried to draw his attention to herself; not from any sentiment of egotism, but to break, if she could, the strain of these insupportable horrors where so short a time before Hope sang and Life revelled in re-awakened joys.

Perhaps some faint realisation of this reached him, for presently he caught her by the hands and bowed his head upon her shoulder and finally let her seat him again, before he said: 

“Do they know of—­of my interest in this?”