d so well; and looked at me as she had
looked when she gave me her last kiss--when her tears had dropped on my
cheek.

I fell on my knees at the table. I stretched out my hands to her
imploringly. I said: "Speak to me--O, once again speak to me,
Jeromette."

Her eyes rested on me with a divine compassion in them. She lifted her
hand, and pointed to the photograph on my desk, with a gesture which
bade me turn the card. I turned it. The name of the man who had left my
house that morning was inscribed on it, in her own handwriting.

I looked up at her again, when I had read it. She lifted her hand once
more, and pointed to the handkerchief round her neck. As I looked at
it, the fair white silk changed horribly in color--the fair white silk
became darkened and drenched in blood.

A moment more--and the vision of her began to grow dim. By slow degrees,
the figure, then the face, faded back into the shadowy appearance that
I had first seen. The luminous inner light died out in the white mist.
The mist itself dropped slowly downward--floated a moment in airy
circles on the floor--vanished. Nothing was before me but the familiar
wall of the room, and the photograph lying face downward on my desk.

X.

THE next day, the newspapers reported the discovery of a murder in
London. A Frenchwoman was the victim. She had been killed by a wound in
the throat. The crime had been discovered between ten and eleven o'clock
on the previous night.

I leave you to draw your conclusion from what I have related. My own
faith in the reality of the apparition is immovable. I say, and
believe, that Jeromette kept her word with me. She died young, and died
miserably. And I heard of it from herself.

Take up the Trial again, and look at the circumstances that were
revealed during the investigation in court. His motive for murdering her
is there.

You will see that she did indeed marry him privately; that they lived
together contentedly, until the fatal day when she discovered that his
fancy had been caught by another woman; that violent quarrels took place
between them, from that time to the time when my sermon showed him his
own deadly hatred toward her, reflected in the case of another man; that
she discovered his place of retreat in my house, and threatened him by
letter with the public assertion of her conjugal rights; lastly, that
a man, variously described by different witnesses, was seen leaving the
door of her lodgings on the night