Consulting the eye of her employer who stood close beside her, and seeing no hope in it, Violet fell slowly back.  The others, followed, and the doctor was left alone with his wife.  From the distant position they took, they saw her arms creep round his neck, saw her head fall confidingly on his breast, then silence settled upon them, and upon all nature, the gathering twilight deepening, till the last glow disappeared from the heavens above and from the circle of leafless trees which enclosed this tragedy from the outside world.

But at last there came a stir, and Dr. Zabriskie, rising up before them with the dead body of his wife held closely to his breast, confronted them with a countenance so rapturous that he looked like a man transfigured.

“I will carry her to the boat,” said he.  “Not another hand shall touch her.  She was my true wife, my true wife!” And he towered into an attitude of such dignity and passion that for a moment he took on heroic proportions and they forgot that he had just proved himself to have committed a cold-blooded and ghastly crime.

The stars were shining when the party again took their seats in the boat; and if the scene of their crossing to Jersey was impressive, what shall be said of the return?

The doctor, as before, sat in the stern, an awesome figure, upon which the moon shone with a white radiance that seemed to lift his face out of the surrounding darkness and set it like an image of frozen horror before their eyes.  Against his breast he held the form of his dead wife, and now and then Violet saw him stoop as if he were listening for some token of life from her set lips.  Then he would lift himself again with hopelessness stamped upon his features, only to lean forward in renewed hope that was again destined to disappointment.

Violet had been so overcome by this tragic end to all her hopes, that her employer had been allowed to enter the boat with her.  Seated at her side in the seat directly in front of the doctor, he watched with her these simple tokens of a breaking heart, saying nothing till they reached midstream, when true to his instincts for all his awe and compassion, he suddenly bent towards him and said: 

“Dr. Zabriskie, the mystery of your crime is no longer a mystery to me.  Listen and see if I do not understand your temptation, and how you, a conscientious and God-fearing man, came to slay your innocent neighbour.

“A friend of yours, or so he called himself, had for a long time filled your ears with tales tending to make you suspicious of your wife and jealous of a certain man whom I will not name.  You knew that your friend had a grudge against this man, and so for many months turned a deaf ear to his insinuations.  But finally some change which you detected in your wife’s bearing or conversation roused your own suspicions, and you began to doubt her truth and to curse your blindness, which in a measure rendered you helpless.  The jealous fever grew and had risen to a high point when one night—­a memorable night—­this friend met you just as you were leaving town, and with cruel craft whispered in your ear that the man you hated was even then with your wife and that if you would return at once to your home you would find him in her company.