s I stared at them!

My senses reeled as I scrutinised those marks. Small, delicate but
deadly, they stared upon me from either side of her white neck till
nature could endure no more and I tottered back against the further wall,
beholding no longer room, nor lounge, nor recumbent body, but a young
girl's exquisite face, set in lines which belied her seventeen years, and
made futile any attempt on my part at self-deception when my reason
inexorably demanded an explanation of this death. As suicide it was
comprehensible, as murder, not, unless--

And it had been murder!

I sank to the floor as I fully realised this.

III

"OPEN!"

PRINCE.--Bring forth the parties of suspicion.

FRIAR.--I am the greatest, as the time and place Doth make against me, of
this direful murder; And here I stand, both to impeach and purge. Myself
condemned and myself excused.

_Romeo and Juliet_.

I have mentioned poison as my first thought. It was a natural one, the
result undoubtedly of having noticed two small cordial glasses standing
on a little table over against the fireplace. When I was conscious again
of my own fears, I crossed to the table and peered into these glasses.
They were both empty. However, they had not been so long. In each I found
traces of anisette cordial, and though no bottle stood near I was very
confident that it could readily be found somewhere in the room. What had
preceded and followed the drinking of this cordial?

As I raised my head from bending over these glasses--not club glasses,
by the way--I caught sight of my face in the mantel mirror. It gave me
maddening thoughts. In this same mirror there had been reflected but a
little while before, two other faces, for a sight of whose expression at
that fatal moment I would gladly risk my soul.

How had _she_ looked--how that other? Would not the story of those
awful, those irrevocable moments be plain to my eye, if the quickly
responsive glass could but retain the impressions it receives and give
back at need what had once informed its surface with moving life!

I stared at the senseless glass, appealed to it with unreasoning frenzy,
as to something which could give up its secret if it would, but only to
meet my own features in every guise of fury and despair--features I no
longer knew--features which insensibly increased my horror till I tore
myself wildly from the spot, and cast about for further clues to
enlightenment, before yielding to the