d hallowed trace of life lingered upon her.

Then the facts of the case were told. She had driven up to the hotel
in a hansom. She had asked if No. 57 was occupied, and on being told
it was not, said she would take it; mentioning at the same time that
she had missed her train, and would not return home till late in the
afternoon. She had told the housemaid to light a fire, and had then
dismissed her. Nothing more was known; but as the porter explained,
it was clear she had gone to bed so as to make sure of shooting
herself through the heart.

"The pistol is still in her hand; we never disturb anything till
after the doctor has completed his examination."

Each felt the chill of steel against the naked side, and seeing the
pair of stays on the table, they calculated its resisting force.

Harding mused on the ghastly ingenuity, withal so strangely
reasonable. Thompson felt he would give his very life to make a
sketch. Mike wondered what her lover was like. Frank was overwhelmed
in sentimental sorrow. John's soul was full of strife and suffering.
He had sacrificed his poems, and had yet ventured in revels which had
led to such results! Then as they went down-stairs, Harding gave the
porter Lewis Seymour's name and address, and said he should be sent
for at once.

CHAPTER VI

"I don't say we have never had a suicide here before, sir," said the
porter in reply to Harding as they descended the steps of the hotel;
"but I don't see how we are to help it. Whenever the upper classes
want to do away with themselves they chose one of the big hotels--the
Grosvenor, the Langham, or ourselves. Indeed they say more has done
the trick in the Langham than 'ere, I suppose because it is more
central; but you can't get behind the motives of such people. They
never think of the trouble and the harm they do us; they only think
of themselves."

London was now awake; the streets were a-clatter with cabs; the pick
of the navvy resounded; night loiterers were disappearing and giving
place to hurrying early risers. In the resonant morning the young men
walked together to the Corner. There they stopped to bid each other
good-bye. John called a cab, and returned home in intense mental
agitation.

"It really is terrible," said Mike. "It isn't like life at all, but
some shocking nightmare. What could have induced her to do it?"

"That we shall probably never know," said Thompson; "and she seemed
brimming over with life and fun. How