ill, and cannot come down again
to-night. God knows you will tell no untruth."

I saw that he was quite beside himself, but ventured upon one
remonstrance.

"It will be unwise to rouse comment," I said. "If that box was taken for
the death it holds, the one restraint most likely to act upon the young
girl who retains it will be the conventionalities of her position and
the requirements of the hour. Any break in the settled order of
things--anything which would give her a moment by herself--might
precipitate the dreadful event we fear. Remember, one turn of the hand,
and all is lost. A drop is quickly swallowed."

"Frightful!" he murmured, the perspiration oozing from his forehead.
"What a wedding-eve! And they are laughing down there. Listen to them. I
even imagine I hear Gilbertine's voice. Is there unconsciousness in it,
or just the hilarity of a distracted mind bent on self-destruction? I
cannot tell; the sound conveys no meaning to me."

"She has a sweet, true face," I said, "and she wears a very beautiful
smile to-night."

He sprang to his feet.

"Yes, yes--a smile that maddens me; a smile that tells me nothing,
nothing! Walter, Walter, don't you see that, even if that cursed box
remains unopened, and nothing ever comes of its theft, the seeds of
distrust are sown thick in my breast, and I must always ask: 'Was there
a moment when my young bride shrank from me enough to dream of death?'
That is why I cannot go through the mockery of this rehearsal."

"Can you go through the ceremony of marriage?"

"I must--if nothing happens to-night."

"And then?"

I spoke involuntarily. I was thinking not of him, but of myself. But he
evidently found in my words an echo of his own thought.

"Yes, it is the _then_," he murmured. "Well may a man quail before that
_then_."

He did go downstairs, however, and later on went through the rehearsal
very much as I had expected him to do--quietly and without any outward
show of emotion.

As soon as possible after this the company separated, Sinclair making me
an imperceptible gesture as he went upstairs. I knew what it meant, and
was in his room as soon as the fellows who accompanied him had left him
alone.

"The danger is from now on," he cried, as soon as I had closed the door
behind me. "I shall not undress to-night."

"Nor I."

"Happily we both have rooms by ourselves in this great house. I shall
put out my light, and then open my door as far as need be. Not a mov