dog. And then, suddenly, she turned and stole away silently as she had
come, and I heard her running softly upstairs. Presently she came down
again, but this time she passed the dining-room and went out of the
street door. I vaguely supposed she had gone for assistance, but the
matter did not concern me. My wife was dead. Nothing mattered now.

"Harratt did not return, however, and I soon forgot her. The death of my
dear one grew more real. I began to appreciate it as an actual fact. And
with this realization, the question of my own death arose. I took it for
granted from the first. The burden of solitary existence was not to be
entertained for a moment. The only question was how, and I debated this
in leisurely fashion, sitting on the floor with Kate's hand in mine. I
had a pistol upstairs and, of course, there were keen-edged scalpels in
the laboratory. But, strange as it may appear, the bias of an anatomical
training even then opposed the idea of gross mechanical injuries.
However, there were plenty of poisons available, and to this method I
inclined as more decent and dignified.

"Having settled on the method, I was disposed to put it into practice
at once; but then another consideration arose. My wife would have to be
buried. By some hands she must be laid in her last resting-place, and
those hands could be none other than my own. So I must stay behind for a
little while.

"The hours passed on unreckoned until pencils of cold blue daylight
began to stream in through the chinks of the shutters and contend with
the warm gaslight within. Then another footstep was heard on the stairs
and the cook, Wilson, came into the room. She, like the housemaid,
stopped dead when she saw my wife's corpse, and stood for an instant
staring wildly with her mouth wide open. But only for an instant. The