ght and touch of the tawdry laces
and flaring ribbons he was surprised by an emotion of tenderness and
pity for his dead wife. He realized that the last link had snapped
that bound him to Cardigan Street and the Push. Something vibrated in
him as he thought of the woman who had shared his youth, and he
understood suddenly that no other woman could disturb her possession of
the years that were dead. Clara could share the future with him, but
half his life belonged irrevocably to Ada.

He had searched every likely nook and corner of the rooms, and found
nothing. The absence of the bottle set him thinking. He became
certain that the hand of another was in this. Ada had never left her
room; therefore the bottle had been brought to her. And the one who
brought it had taken it away again. Clara had been the last one to see
her alive, and of course...He stopped with an unshaped thought in his
mind, and then smiled at it for an absurdity. Tired with his
exertions, he sat on the sofa, digging his elbow into the cushion, and
instantly felt something hard underneath. The next moment he was on
his feet, holding in his hands the bottle of brandy, half empty. He
stared stupidly at the bottle that had sent Ada to her death and set
him free, wondering who had paid for it and brought it into the house.
As he turned the bottle in his hands, examining it with the morbid
interest with which one examines a bloodstained knife, he heard a light
tap on the door.

"Come in," he cried, absorbed in his discovery.

He turned with the bottle in his hands, to find Clara standing in the
doorway with a tremulous smile on her lips. But, as Jonah turned, her
eye fell on the bottle.

"I've been a day findin' this," said Jonah; "but now..."

An extraordinary change in Clara's face stopped the words on his lips.
The tremulous smile on her parted lips changed to a nervous grin, and
her colour turned to a greyish white as she stared at the bottle, her
eyes dilated with horror. For some moments there was a dreadful
silence, in which Jonah distinctly heard Miss Giltinan giving an order
downstairs. Slowly he looked from Clara to the bottle. Again he stared
at the frightened woman, and his mind leapt to a dreadful certainty.

"Come in, an' shut the door," he said. His voice was little more than
a whisper.

Clara obeyed him mechanically.

"Sit down," he added, putting the bottle on the table.

For a while each stared at the other, too stu