ce--he'd have been the last man to accuse her of anything of
_that_ sort. I never met a woman who impressed me more strongly as
being thoroughly respectable."

"Come now, J. J. Murder! Surely murder--"

"Not when treated as an art. De Quincey wrote an essay on the subject.
If you'd read it, you'd know better than to mix up artistic murder with
the commonplace assassinations of the ordinary burglar. You might just
as well say that Beethoven is the same sort of person as the Italian
organ-grinder who plays abominable tunes under your window, in the hope
of your giving him twopence to go away."

"Nothing you've said so far," said the Major, "convinces me in the
least that your identification of the lady is certain, or even likely
to be right."

"I knew you'd be sceptical. You always are sceptical about anything
the least out of the common; so while I was shaving this morning I
arranged the evidence in such a way that you can't possibly escape from
it. In the first place, there are the portraits. I don't dwell on
them because you haven't seen Miss King, and so they won't--for the
present--carry much weight with you. In the second place, there is her
confession. You choose to consider that I was mistaken about that, and
that Miss King was really confessing something of quite a different
kind. I say nothing about the improbability of my being mistaken in a
perfectly simple matter. I simply leave the confession on one side,
and offer you corroborative evidence of a quite unmistakable
description. Here's a copy of a Dublin paper. I put it in my pocket
on purpose to show it to you. I suppose you'll believe what you see
printed in a newspaper?"

"It depends very much what it is. I don't believe everything I see in
papers."

"That, if you'll excuse my saying so, seems to me to be carrying your
habit of scepticism to the verge of actual mania. I don't think you
ought to adopt that kind of attitude, Major. If you had been trained
in theology, or even secular metaphysics, it might be excusable; though
then, of course, you wouldn't do it. But in a simple and almost
entirely uneducated country gentleman like you, it's simply grotesque."

"Go on about the newspaper, J. J."

"Here it is for you; but I don't see that it's much use giving it to
you if your mind is made up beforehand to disbelieve every word that's
in it."

He took a newspaper from his pocket and handed it to Major Kent,
indicating with his th