ont door. I sat up in bed and rapped
my knuckles against the rail to make certain that I was truly awake.
Then I took my watch from under the pillow. It was three in the morning.
What on this earth could my wife be doing out on the country road at
three in the morning?

"I had sat for about twenty minutes turning the thing over in my mind
and trying to find some possible explanation. The more I thought the
more extraordinary and inexplicable did it appear. I was still puzzling
over it when I heard the door gently close again and her footsteps
coming up the stairs.

"'Where in the world have you been, Effie?' I asked, as she entered.

"She gave a violent start and a kind of gasping cry when I spoke, and
that cry and start troubled me more than all the rest, for there was
something indescribably guilty about them. My wife had always been a
woman of a frank, open nature, and it gave me a chill to see her
slinking into her own room, and crying out and wincing when her own
husband spoke to her.

"'You awake, Jack?' she cried, with a nervous laugh. 'Why, I thought
that nothing could awaken you.'

"'Where have you been?' I asked, more sternly.

"'I don't wonder that you are surprised,' said she, and I could see that
her fingers were trembling as she undid the fastenings of her mantle.
'Why, I never remember having done such a thing in my life before. The
fact is, that I felt as though I were choking, and had a perfect longing
for a breath of fresh air. I really think that I should have fainted if
I had not gone out. I stood at the door for a few minutes, and now I am
quite myself again.'

"All the time that she was telling me this story she never once looked
in my direction, and her voice was quite unlike her usual tones. It was
evident to me that she was saying what was false. I said nothing in
reply, but turned my face to the wall, sick at heart, with my mind
filled with a thousand venomous doubts and suspicions. What was it that
my wife was concealing from me? Where had she been during that strange
expedition? I felt that I should have no peace until I knew, and yet I
shrank from asking her again after once she had told me what was false.
All the rest of the night I tossed and tumbled, framing theory after
theory, each more unlikely than the last.

"I should have gone to the City that day, but I was too perturbed in my
mind to be able to pay attention to business matters. My wife seemed to
be as upset as myself, a