him, but to be traced, fully understood, and intelligently shown forth
only by the few who are gifted to read and expound the secrets of human
hearts. That is a gift beyond my endowment, and fitted for a task too
difficult for my hand. Frankly, I did not, always and throughout, discern
as clearly as I could desire the springs on which the conduct of my
fellow-actors turned; and the account I have given of their feelings and
their motives must be accepted merely as my reading of them, and for what,
as such, it is worth. The actual facts speak for themselves. Let each man
read them as he will; and if he does not indorse all my views, yet he
will, I venture to think, be recompensed by a story which even the
greatest familiarity and long pondering has not robbed of all its interest
for me. But then I must admit that I have reasons which no one else can
have for following with avidity every stage and every development in the
drama, and for seeking to discern now what at the time was dark and
puzzling to me.

The thing began in the most ordinary way in the world--or perhaps that is
too strongly put. The beginning was ordinary indeed, and tame, compared
with the sequel. Yet even the beginning had a flavor of the unusual about
it, strong enough to startle a man so used to a humdrum life and so
unversed in anything out of the common as I. Here, then, is the beginning:

One morning, as I sat smoking my after-breakfast cigar in my rooms in St.
James' Street, my friend Gustave de Berensac rushed in. His bright brown
eyes were sparkling, his mustache seemed twisted up more gayly and
triumphantly than ever, and his manner was redolent of high spirits. Yet
it was a dull, somber, misty morning, for all that the month was July and
another day or two would bring August. But Gustave was a merry fellow,
though always (as I had occasion to remember later on) within the limits
of becoming mirth--as to which, to be sure, there may be much difference