t her spirits. She took up a book presently, and appeared
to read; but, once in glancing up suddenly from my newspaper, I thought
I caught her gaze fixed fearfully upon me. It seemed to me that she was
looking furtively at me with an absolute terror. I was so much affected
that I made some excuse for leaving the room, went down to my den, lit
a cigar, and walked uneasily up and down, listening to the rain on the
window. At ten Margot came in to tell me she was going to bed. I wished
her good-night tenderly, but as I held her slim body a moment in my arms
I felt that she began to tremble. I let her go, and she slipped from
the room with the soft, cushioned step that was habitual with her. And,
strangely enough, my thoughts recurred to the day, long ago, when I
first held the great white cat on my knees, and felt its body shrink
from my touch with a nameless horror. The uneasy movement of the woman
recalled to me so strongly and so strangely the uneasy movement of the
animal.

I lit a second cigar. It was near midnight when it was smoked out, and I
turned down the lamp and went softly up to bed. I undressed in the room
adjoining my wife's, and then stole into hers. She was sleeping in the
wide white bed rather uneasily, and as I leaned over her, shading the
candle flame with my outspread hand, she muttered some broken words that
I could not catch. I had never heard her talk in her dreams before. I
lay down gently at her side and extinguished the candle.

But sleep did not come to me. The dull, dead silence weighed upon
instead of soothing me. My mind was terribly alive, in a ferment;
and the contrast between my own excitement and the hushed peace of my
environment was painful, was almost unbearable. I wished that a wind
from the mountains were beating against the window-panes, and the
rain lashing the house in fury. The black calm around was horrible,
unnatural. The drizzling rain was now so small that I could not even
hear its patter when I strained my ears. Margot had ceased to mutter,
and lay perfectly still. How I longed to be able to read the soul hidden
in her sleeping body, to unravel the mystery of the mind which I had
once understood so perfectly! It is so horrible that we can never open
the human envelope, take out the letter, and seize with our eyes upon
its every word. Margot slept with all her secrets safeguarded, although
she was unconscious, no longer watchful, on the alert. She was so
silent, even her qui