The key moved gently in the lock; the lock yielded; a moment more and I
had pulled a tiny fold of the curtain aside, and commanded a full view
of the silent room. It was flooded with moonlight, and as light as day.
The bed was curtained, after the English fashion, but I fancied I could
hear a slight rustle of the coverings, as though one were roused, and
stirring restlessly. So light was the room that I could discern the
articles on the bureau and dressing-table. A branch of a great elm,
which grew at the side of the house, stretched across one window, and
its leaves, dancing in the night-breeze, made an ever-changing pattern
in shadow on the carpet. Did ever accepted lover keep such a tryst as
mine before? And she, just waking from her first sleep behind the
delicate white curtains of that bed, her tryst was with death, not with
love.

From the grove back of the house came a whip-poor-will's plaintive song,
pulsing in a tide of melody on the moonlit air. Was it a moan from the
bed, half-coherent and hopeless in cadence? Heaven grant that she waken
no one until it is too late, I thought fervently. I heard her step from
the bed. Once I would have hidden my eyes as devoutly as the pagan
blinded himself lest he should see Artemis, on whom it was desecration
to look, but now I hesitated no more to gaze on her than on any other
beautiful hateful thing which I should crush. Her loveliness stirred
neither my senses nor my compassion; both were forever dead, I knew, to
woman. Full in the stream of moonlight she stood, the soft, white folds
of her nightdress enveloping her from the throat to the small feet they
half hid. Her eyes were wide open, she was awake.

She remained for some moments by the window, meditating, apparently. She
talked to herself rapidly and in low undertones. What would I have given