Her confidence roused my most vivid curiosity.  When she left I left with her.  The Le Geyts lived in one of those new streets of large houses on Campden Hill, so that our way eastward lay naturally through Kensington Gardens.

It was a sunny June day, when light pierced even through the smoke of London, and the shrubberies breathed the breath of white lilacs.  “Now, what did you mean by that enigmatical saying?” I asked my new Cassandra, as we strolled down the scent-laden path.  “Woman’s intuition is all very well in its way; but a mere man may be excused if he asks for evidence.”

She stopped short as I spoke, and gazed full into my eyes.  Her hand fingered her parasol handle.  “I meant what I said,” she answered, with emphasis.  “Within one year, Mr. Le Geyt will have murdered his wife.  You may take my word, for it.”

“Le Geyt!” I cried.  “Never!  I know the man so well!  A big, good-natured, kindly schoolboy!  He is the gentlest and best of mortals.  Le Geyt a murderer!  Im—­possible!”

Her eyes were far away.  “Has it never occurred to you,” she asked, slowly, with her pythoness air, “that there are murders and murders?—­murders which depend in the main upon the murderer . . . and also murders which depend in the main upon the victim?”

“The victim?  What do you mean?”

“Well, there are brutal men who commit murder out of sheer brutality—­the ruffians of the slums; and there are sordid men who commit murder for sordid money—­the insurers who want to forestall their policies, the poisoners who want to inherit property; but have you ever realised that there are also murderers who become so by accident, through their victims’ idiosyncrasy?  I thought all the time while I was watching Mrs. Le Geyt, ’That woman is of the sort predestined to be murdered.’ . . .  And when you asked me, I told you so.  I may have been imprudent; still, I saw it, and I said it.”

“But this is second sight!” I cried, drawing away.  “Do you pretend to prevision?”

“No, not second sight; nothing uncanny, nothing supernatural.  But prevision, yes; prevision based, not on omens or auguries, but on solid fact—­on what I have seen and noticed.”

“Explain yourself, oh, prophetess!”

She let the point of her parasol make a curved trail on the gravel, and followed its serpentine wavings with her eyes.  “You know our house surgeon?” she asked at last, looking up of a sudden.

“What, Travers?  Oh, intimately.”

“Then come to my ward and see.  After you have seen, you will perhaps believe me.”

Nothing that I could say would get any further explanation out of her just then.  “You would laugh at me if I told you,” she persisted; “you won’t laugh when you have seen it.”

We walked on in silence as far as Hyde Park Corner.  There my Sphinx tripped lightly up the steps of St. George’s Hospital.  “Get Mr. Travers’s leave,” she said, with a nod, and a bright smile, “to visit Nurse Wade’s ward.  Then come up to me there in five minutes.”