st me. The mechanism of it
was simple. The grounds back of my house, you know, were large, and you
may not have forgotten the lane of tall, clipped shrubbery that led up
from the rear to a summer-house. His calls in the evening were made
early and ended early. The pinkness of all propriety was about them. The
servants suspected nothing. But, his call ended, the graceful gentleman,
friend of mine, and lover of my wife, would walk but a few hundred
paces, then turn and enter my grounds at the rear gate I have mentioned,
and pass up the arbor to the pretty summer-house. He would find time for
pleasant anticipation there as he lolled upon one of the soft divans
with which I had furnished the charming place, but his waiting would not
be long. She would soon come to him, and time passed swiftly.

"That is the prologue to my little play. Pretty prologue, isn't it?--but
commonplace. The play proper isn't! The same conditions affect men
differently. When I learned what I have told--after the first awful five
minutes--I don't like to think of them, even now!--I became the most
deliberate man on the face of this earth peopled with sinners.
Sometimes, they say, the whole substance of a man's blood may be changed
in a second by chemical action. My blood was changed, I think. The
poison had transmuted it. There was a leaden sluggishness, but my head
was clear.

"I had odd fancies. I remember I thought of a nobleman who had another
torn slowly apart by horses for proving false to him at the siege of
Calais. His cruelty had been a youthful horror to me. Now I had a
tremendous appreciation of the man. 'Good fellow, good fellow!' I went
about muttering to myself in a foolish, involuntary way. I wondered how
my wife's lover could endure the strain of four strong Clydesdales, each
started at the same moment, one north, one south, one east, one west.
His charming personal appearance recurred to me, and I thought of his
fine neck. Women like a fine-throated man, and he was one. I wondered if
my wife's fancy tended the same way. It was well this idea came to me,
for it gave me an inspiration. I thought of the dog.

"There is no harm, is there, in training a dog to pull down a stuffed
figure? There is no harm, either, if the stuffed figure be given the
simulated habiliments of some friend of yours. And what harm can there
be in training the dog in a garden arbor instead of in a basement? I
dropped into the way of being at home a little more.