less before the law. I have absolutely "nothing on her"--nothing but
an impression I shall never be rid of, which even now returns to chill
me in nights of insomnia: a sense of having met in life one woman whose
eyes may now and then have watered from dust or wind, but could never
under any circumstances conceivably human have known tears. Other women,
too many of them, have bored or exasperated me with maudlin or trivial
tears; but never before or since have I met a woman who _could_ not
weep. It is a fixed idea with me that the Widow Guyot could not; and the
idea haunts and troubles me strangely--though why it should, I am too
casual a psychologist even to guess.

At her heels, I crossed a small cluttered shop, following the tremulous
flame of the candle through a fantastic shadow dance; Doctor
Pollain--who had given me his name with the deprecating cough of one who
knows himself either unpleasantly notorious or hopelessly
obscure--shuffled behind us. Madame Guyot opened an inner door. Light
from the room beyond tempered a little the vagueness about me and
ghostily revealed a huddle of ecclesiastical trumpery--rows of thin,
pale-yellow tapers; small crucifixes of plaster or base-metal gilded; a
stand of picture post-cards; a table littered with lesser gimcracks. The
direct rays from Madame Guyot's candle, as she turned a moment in the
doorway, wanly illuminated the blue-coiffed, vapid face of a bisque
Virgin; gave for that instant a half-flicker, as of just-stirring life,
to her mannered, meaningless smile.

The room beyond proved to be a good-sized bedroom, its one window
muffled by heavy stuff-curtains of a dull magenta red. A choking,
composite odor--I detected the sick pungency of chloroform--emerged from
it. I plunged to enter, and for a second instinctively held my breath.
On the great walnut double-bed lay a still figure covered with a sheet;
the proper candles twinkled at head and foot. But it is needless to
describe these things....

It was in a smaller room beyond, a combined living-and-dining room,
stodgily ugly, but comfortable enough as well, that I first made the
acquaintance of James Aulard Kane. What I saw was a great roll of
blankets in a deep boxlike cradle, and in the depths of a deeply dented
feather pillow a tiny, wrinkled monkey-face, a miniature grotesque. The
small knife-slit that served him for mouth opened and shut slowly and
continuously, as if feebly gasping for difficult breath. He gave