f anything would be gained by these imitations of Paris. His
discourse was, however, interrupted by a porter from the Alexandra
Hotel asking to be directed to a certain street. He had been sent to
fetch a doctor immediately--a lady just come from an evening party
had committed suicide.

"What was she like?" Harding asked.

"A tall woman."

"Dark or fair?"

He couldn't say, but thought she was something between the two.
Prompted by a strange curiosity, feeling, they knew not why, but
still feeling that it might be some one from Temple Gardens, they
went to the hotel, and obtained a description of the suicide from the
head-porter. The lady was very tall, with beautiful golden hair. For
a description of her dress the housemaid was called.

"I hope," said Mike, "she won't say she was dressed in cream-pink,
trimmed with olive ribbons." She did. Then Harding told the porter he
was afraid the lady was Lady Helen Seymour, a friend of theirs, whom
they had seen that night in a party given in Temple Gardens by this
gentleman, Mr. Frank Escott. They were conducted up the desert
staircase of the hotel, for the lift did not begin working till seven
o'clock. The door stood ajar, and servants were in charge. On the
left was a large bed, with dark-green curtains, and in the middle of
the room a round table. There were two windows. The toilette-table
stood between bed and window, and in the bland twilight of closed
Venetian blinds a handsome fire flared loudly, throwing changing
shadows upon the ceiling, and a deep, glowing light upon the red
panels of the wardrobe. So the room fixed itself for ever on their
minds. They noted the crude colour of the Brussels carpet, and even
the oilcloth around the toilette-table was remembered. They saw that
the round table was covered with a red tablecloth, and that writing
materials were there, a pair of stays, a pair of tan gloves, and some
withering flowers. They saw the ball-dress that Lady Helen had worn
thrown over the arm-chair; the silk stockings, the satin shoes--and a
gleam of sunlight that found its way between the blinds fell upon a
piece of white petticoat. Lady Helen lay in the bed, thrown back low
down on the pillow, the chin raised high, emphasizing a line of
strained white throat. She lay in shadow and firelight, her cheek
touched by the light. Around her eyes the shadows gathered, and as a
landscape retains for an hour some impression of the day which is
gone, so a softened an