, and bent over him. His features were not to be
recognised.

As I straightened myself up, with the candle in my hand, for an instant
those features, obliterated in the flesh, gazed at me in a ring, a
hundred times repeated behind a hundred candles. And again, at a second
glance, I saw that the face was not Gervase's but my own.

I set down the candle and made off, closing the door behind me.
The horror of it held me by the hair, but I flung it off and pelted down
the lane and through the mews. Once in the street I breathed again,
pulled myself together, and set off at a rapid walk, southwards, but not
clearly knowing whither.

As a matter of fact, I took the line by which I had come: with the
single difference that I made straight into Berkeley Square through
Bruton Street. I had, I say, no clear purpose in following this line
rather than another. I had none for taking Lennox Gardens on the way to
my squalid lodgings in Chelsea. I had a purpose, no doubt; but will
swear it only grew definite as I came in sight of the lamp still burning
beneath Gervase's portico.

There was a figure, too, under the lamp--the butler--bending there and
rolling up the strip of red carpet. As he pulled its edges from the
frozen snow I came on him suddenly.

"Oh, it's you, Sir!" He stood erect, and with the air of a man
infinitely relieved.

"Gervase!"

The door opened wide and there stood Elaine in her ball-gown, a-glitter
with diamonds.

"Gervase, dear, where have you been? We have been terribly anxious--"

She said it, looking straight down on me--on me--who stood in my
tattered clothes in the full glare of the lamp. And then I heard the
butler catch his breath, and suddenly her voice trailed off in wonder
and pitiful disappointment.

"It's not Gervase! It's Reg--Mr. Travers. I beg your pardon.
I thought--"

But I passed up the steps and stood before her: and said, as she drew
back--

"There has been an accident. Gervase has shot himself." I turned to
the butler. "You had better run to the police station. Stay: take this
revolver. It won't count anything as evidence: but I ask you to examine
it and make sure all the chambers are loaded."

A thud in the hall interrupted me. I ran in and knelt beside Elaine,
and as I stooped to lift her--as my hand touched her hair--this was the
jealous question on my lips--

"What has _she_ to do with it. It is _I_ who cannot do without him--who
must miss him always!"