s somewhere
among them now, I have never yielded to the temptation to look at it
again. I may have thought of it merely to add to the opinion of Jarvis
that the writing was not Julianna's, the apparently indisputable fact
that, at the moment the warning had been written, Julianna was, by the
word of the apartment house doorman, waiting for me in the little
reception room. Furthermore, with my success in winning her, with the
intoxication of it, I began to look upon the strange and unexplained
matters which had so perplexed me as trivial illusions beneath the
consideration of good sense. However much you may be surprised at my
willful blindness, your wonder cannot equal that which I myself feel
to-night.

And now, when I am about to tell you of that memorable Friday, I must
impress upon you that no detail of it is distorted in my memory, that so
clear and vivid were the impressions upon my senses that, were I to live
to the age of pyramids, I could recall every slight sequence with
accuracy. I say this because you are a physician and as such, no
doubt,--and it is no different in the case of us lawyers,--have learned
the absurd fallibility of ordinary human testimony, not excluding that
which proceeds from the highest and most honorable type of our
civilization.

The day, as I was about to tell you, had been saved from the heat of
the season by a breeze which blew from the water and once or twice even
reached the velocity of a storm wind. A hundred times I had looked out
my office window and a hundred times I had seen that not one speck of
cloud showed in the sky. Yet all day long, while I tried to work, only
to find myself all on edge with expectancy, I could hear the flap and
rustle of the American flag on the Custom-House roof, which was
straining at its cords and lashing itself into a frenzy like a wild
creature in chains.

I am not sure that a dry storm of this kind is not freighted with some
nerve-twanging quality. I have often noticed on such days a universal
irritability on the part of mankind, and I have been informed by those
who have traveled much that often a nervous wind of this kind, in
countries where such things happen, precedes some disaster such as
volcanic eruptions, avalanches, earthquakes, and tidal waves.

My own nervousness, however, took the form of impatience. I was absurdly
eager to go at once to Julianna, and the fact that the hour for dinner
had finally arrived, and that the remaining time