t to
break the inevitable shock, she went on: "Miss Challoner was struck dead
and you were taken down with typhoid on the self-same day."

"Struck dead! Why do you use that word, struck? Struck dead! she, a
young woman. Oh, Doris, an accident! My darling has been killed in an
accident!"

"They do not call it accident. They call it what it never was. What it
never was," she insisted, pressing him back with frightened hands, as he
strove to rise. "Miss Challoner was--" How nearly the word shot had
left her lips. How fiercely above all else, in that harrowing moment had
risen the desire to fling the accusation of that word into the ears of
him who listened from his secret hiding-place. But she refrained out of
compassion for the man she loved, and declared instead, "Miss Challoner
died from a wound; how given, why given, no one knows. I had rather have
died myself than have to tell you this. Oh, Mr. Brotherson, speak, sob,
do anything but--"

She started back, dropping his hands as she did so. With quick intuition
she saw that he must be left to himself if he were to meet this blow
without succumbing. The body must have freedom if the spirit would not
go mad. Conscious, or perhaps not conscious, of his release from her
restraining hand, albeit profiting by it, he staggered to his feet,
murmuring that word of doom: "Wound! wound! my darling died of a wound!
What kind of a wound?" he suddenly thundered out. "I cannot understand
what you mean by wound. Make it clear to me. Make it clear to me at
once. If I must bear this grief, let me know its whole depth. Leave
nothing to my imagination or I cannot answer for myself. Tell it all,
Doris."

And Doris told him:

"She was on the mezzanine floor of the hotel where she lives. She was
seemingly happy and had been writing a letter--a letter to me which
they never forwarded. There was no one else by but some strangers--good
people whom one must believe. She was crossing the floor when suddenly
she threw up her hands and fell. A thin, narrow paper-cutter was in her
grasp; and it flew into the lobby. Some say she struck herself with that
cutter; for when they picked her up they found a wound in her breast
which that cutter might have made."

"Edith? never!"

The words were chokingly said; he was swaying, almost falling, but he
steadied himself.

"Who says that?" he asked.

"It was the coroner's verdict."

"And she died that way--died?"

"Immediately."

"After writing