ng to the municipal lighting of the
thoroughfare.

Trams had been rushing past her in endless succession: but now there
was a lull. Close by her a taxi-auto whizzed quickly past and came to
a standstill some hundred yards away, near the pavement, and not far
from an electric light standard.

Louisa, with vacant eyes attached on that cab, but with her mind fixed
on a particular room in a particular house in Grosvenor Square where
lived a man of the name of Luke de Mountford, continued her walk.
Those same vacant eyes of hers presently saw the chauffeur of the
taxi-auto get down from his box and open the door of the cab, and then
her absent mind was suddenly brought back from Grosvenor Square,
London, to the Boulevard Waterloo in Brussels, by a terrible cry of
horror which had broken from that same chauffeur's lips. Instinctively
Louisa hurried on, but, even as she did so, a small crowd which indeed
seemed to have sprung from nowhere had already gathered round the
vehicle.

Murmurs of "What is it? What is it?" mingled with smothered groans of
terror, as curiosity caused one or two of the more bold to peer into
the gloomy depths of the cab. Shrill calls brought a couple of
_gardiens_ to the spot. In a moment Louisa found herself a unit in an
eager, anxious crowd, asking questions, conjecturing, wondering,
horror-struck as soon as a plausible and graphic explanation came from
those who were in the fore-front and were privileged to see.

"A man--murdered----"

"But how?"

"The chauffeur got down from his box . . . and looked in . . . ah,
_mon Dieu_!"

"What did he see?"

"A man . . . he is quite young . . . only about twenty years of age."

"Stabbed through the neck----"

"Stabbed?--Bah?"

"Right through the neck I tell you . . . just below the ear. I can see
the wound, quite small as if done with a skewer."

"_Allons! Voyons! Voyons!_" came the gruff accents from the two portly
_gardiens_ who worked vigorously with elbows and even feet to keep the
crowd somewhat at bay.

Louisa was on the fringe of the crowd. She could see nothing of
course--she did not wish to see that which the chauffeur saw when
first he opened the door of his cab--but she stood rooted to the spot,
feeling that strange, unexplainable fascination which one always
feels, when one of those great life dramas of which one reads so often
and so indifferently happens to be enacted within the close range of
one's own perception.

She gleaned