"Wife or widow?"

"Widow."

What a voice! how it reached every heart, waking strange sympathies
there! As the word fell, not a person in the room but stirred uneasily.
Even she herself started at its sound; and moved, perhaps, by the depth
of silence which followed, she added in suppressed tones:

"A widow within the hour. That's why you see me still in colors, but
crushed as you behold--killed! killed!"

That settled it. There was no mistaking her condition after an expression
of this kind. The Curator and Mr. Gryce exchanged glances, and Mr.
Roberts, stepping from his corner, betrayed the effect which her words
had produced on him, by whispering in the detective's ear:

"What you need is an alienist."

Had she heard? It would seem so from the quick way she roused and
exclaimed with indignant emphasis:

"You do not understand me! I see that I must drink my bitter cup to the
dregs. This is what I mean: My husband was living this morning--living
up to the hour when the clock in this building struck twelve. I knew it
from the joyous hopes with which my breast was filled. But with the
stroke of noon the blow fell. I was bending above the poor child who had
fallen so suddenly at my feet, when the vision came, and I saw him gazing
at me from a distance so remote--across a desert so immeasurable--that
nothing but death could create such a removal or make of him the ghastly