e hissed. "Assassin!" she hissed again. "What curse----"

"Viola, it was for your sake."

She clinched her hand as though she sought the strength wherewith to
strike. And then the fingers loosened again. She moved still farther
away. The hatred left her eyes, as the wonder had done before. With the
majesty which Mary Stuart must have shown when she bade farewell to
England, to the sceptre, and to life, Viola Raritan turned to him again:

"I loved him," she muttered, yet so faintly that she had left the room
before Tristrem, who still crouched by the chair which she had vacated,
fully caught the import of her words.

"Viola!" he called. But she had gone. "Viola! No, no; it is impossible.
It is impossible," he repeated, as he rose up again; "it is impossible."

He staggered to the door and let himself out. And then, as the night-air
affects one who has loitered over the wine, he reeled.

In a vision such as is said to visit the ultimate consciousness of they
that drown, a riot of long-forgotten incidents surged to his mind. He
battled with them in vain; they were trivial, indeed, but in their
onslaught he saw that the impossible was truth.

With the aimlessness of a somnambulist, and reasoning with himself the
while, he walked down through Madison Avenue until he reached the
square. There, turning into Lexington, he entered Gramercy Park.
Presently he found himself standing at Weldon's door. "But what am I
doing here?" he mused. For a little time, he leaned against the rail,
endeavoring to collect his thoughts. Then, as an individual, coated in
blue and glistening as to his buttons, sauntered by, he seemed to
understand. He left the railing at which he had stood, and, circling the
park, set out in the direction of the river. As he reached Second
Avenue, a train of the elevated railway flamed about an adjacent corner,
and swept like a dragon in mid-air, on, beyond, and out of sight. To the
right was a great factory, and as Tristrem continued his way through the
unfamiliar street he wondered what the people in the train, what the
factory-hands, and the dwellers in the neighborhood would say if they
could surmise his errand. The river was yet some distance away. It was
such a pity, he told himself, such a pity, that he had not accepted the
invitation of the sea. That would have been so much better, so much
surer, and so much more discreet. And then he fell to wondering about
his grandfather, and his heart was filled wi