inctly heard the words:

'_Things being as they are in the matter of the death of Peter ..._'

And there it stopped dead, leaving me so sick, my God, so sick, that I
could hardly snatch my robes about me to fly, fly, fly, soft-footed,
murmuring in pain, down the steps, down like a sneaking thief, but
quick, snatching myself away, then wrestling with the cruel catch of the
door which she would not let me open, feeling her all the time behind
me, watching me. And when I did get out, I was away up the length of the
street, trailing my long _jubbah_, glancing backward, panting, for I
thought that she might dare to follow, with her daring evil will. And
all that night I lay on a common bench in the wind-tossed and dismal
Park.

* * * * *

The first thing which I did when the sun was up was to return to that
place: and I returned with hard and masterful brow.

Approaching Peters' house I saw now, what the darkness had hidden from
me, that on his balcony was someone--quite alone there. The balcony is a
slight open-work wrought-iron structure, connected to a small roof by
three slender voluted pillars, two at the ends, one in the middle: and
at the middle one I saw someone, a woman--kneeling--her arms clasped
tight about the pillar, and her face rather upward-looking. Never did I
see aught more horrid: there were the gracious curves of the woman's
bust and hips still well preserved in a clinging dress of red cloth,
very faded now; and her reddish hair floated loose in a large flimsy
cloud about her; but her face, in that exposed position, had been quite
eaten away by the winds to a noseless skeleton, which grinned from ear
to ear, with slightly-dropped under-jaw--most horrid in contrast with
the body, and frame of hair. I meditated upon her a long time that
morning from the opposite pavement. An oval locket at her throat
contained, I knew, my likeness: for eight years previously I had given
it her. It was Clodagh, the poisoner.

I thought that I would go into that house, and walk through it from top
to bottom, and sit in it, and spit in it, and stamp in it, in spite of
any one: for the sun was now high. I accordingly went in again, and up
the stairs to the spot where I had been frightened, and had heard the
words. And here a great rage took me, for I at once saw that I had been
made the dupe of the malign wills that beset me, and the laughing-stock
of Those for whom I care not a fig. From a