he quoted to herself as she undressed; and while she
prided herself upon being above superstition, decided upon the above
method of propitiating the Shade.

In the night she had a dream which bathed her in the sweat of terror.
Opening her dreaming eyes upon the dressing-table which faced the foot
of the bed she saw the figure of the dead wife standing there. Its
back, clothed in its long nightdress, was turned to her, but in the
glass which had so often reflected it she saw the foolish, fat face,
the over-curled, fair hair. She saw, too, that the figure held in one
hand its own photograph, while, with a pencil held in the other it
wrote, smiling the while its own fatuous smile, on the reverse of the
picture.

In her dream the Bride knew this vision to be a dream, a knowledge
which by no means lessened the horror of it. "I must awake or die!" she
said, and in a minute seemed broad awake.

It was morning; the sunshine flooding the room shone, with a brilliance
which hurt the eyes upon the silver frame of the picture on the
dressing-table. Nothing else was there; all the silver-topped pans and
jars and bottles had disappeared; even the companion photograph was no
longer to be seen; only the face of her one-time friend smiled and
smiled and seemed to beckon from the strangely brilliant, dazzling
frame.

With the horror of the dream no whit abated, the Bride rose heavily
from her bed, dragged mysteriously attracted feet, that yet seemed
weighted with lead, across the floor to the dressing-table; picked up
in a hand that fumblingly obeyed the motion of her will, the picture.

Upon the back, written in the dead woman's familiar scrawl were the
date of her death, and the words, "Died by my own hand."

In the desperate effort to cast the picture from her paralysed grasp,
the Bride awoke.

She was really awake at last, and lying, faint with the dews of
remembered terror, upon her bed, her head upon her husband's shoulder.

Thank God, awake at last! How horrible that had been!

Clinging to him in terror at first, she presently extricated herself
from the man's encircling arm, and switched on the light. She dared not
lie in the darkness with the thoughts that assailed her. Never for one
instant before had the possibility of the wife's self-destruction
occurred to her. Yet, all at once, how probable, how almost certain it
seemed.

Died by her own hand! How easy it would have been! An overdose of the
opiate the doctor wa