“Well, I answered him, rather brusquely I am afraid, for a crazed man who is about to leave the world under such circumstances does not show at his best when disturbed almost in the very act, to the edge of which long agony has brought him.  I told him that all his dream of snakes seemed ridiculous, which obviously it was, and was about to send him away, when it occurred to me that the suggestion it conveyed that I should put myself in communication with you was not ridiculous in view of the part you had already played in the story.”

“Very far from ridiculous,” I interpolated.

“To tell the truth,” went on Lord Ragnall, “I had already thought of doing the same thing, but somehow beneath the pressure of my imminent grief the idea was squeezed out of my mind, perhaps because you were so far away and I did not know if I could find you even if I tried.  Pausing for a moment before I dismissed Savage, I rose from the desk at which I was writing and began to walk up and down the room thinking what I would do.  I am not certain if you saw it when you were at Ragnall, but it is a large room, fifty feet long or so though not very broad.  It has two fireplaces, in both of which fires were burning on this night, and it was lit by four standing lamps besides that upon my desk.  Now between these fireplaces, in a kind of niche in the wall, and a little in the shadow because none of the lamps was exactly opposite to it, hung a portrait of my wife which I had caused to be painted by a fashionable artist when first we became engaged.”

“I remember it,” I said.  “Or rather, I remember its existence.  I did not see it because a curtain hung over the picture, which Savage told me you did not wish to be looked at by anybody but yourself.  At the time I remarked to him, or rather to myself, that to veil the likeness of a living woman in such a way seemed to me rather an ill-omened thing to do, though why I should have thought it so I do not quite know.”

“You are quite right, Quatermain.  I had that foolish fancy, a lover’s freak, I suppose.  When we married the curtain was removed although the brass rod on which it hung was left by some oversight.  On my return to England after my loss, however, I found that I could not bear to look upon this lifeless likeness of one who had been taken from me so cruelly, and I caused it to be replaced.  I did more.  In order that it might not be disturbed by some dusting housemaid, I myself made it fast with three or four tin-tacks which I remember I drove through the velvet stuff into the panelling, using a fireiron as a hammer.  At the time I thought it a good job although by accident I struck the nail of the third finger of my left hand so hard that it came off.  Look, it has not quite finished growing again,” and he showed the finger on which the new nail was still in process of formation.