come from the street outside my window. I sprang to the window and
threw it open. A street lamp directly opposite threw a wan and
ghastly light upon the wet pavement and the fronts of the houses. A
single policeman, with upturned collar, was leaning against a
gatepost, quietly smoking a cigar. No one else was in sight. I
closed the window and pulled down the shade, seated myself before the
fire and tried to fix my mind upon my surroundings. By way of
assisting, by performance of some familiar act, I looked at my watch;
it marked half-past eleven. Again I heard that awful cry! It seemed
in the room--at my side. I was frightened and for some moments had
not the power to move. A few minutes later--I have no recollection
of the intermediate time--I found myself hurrying along an unfamiliar
street as fast as I could walk. I did not know where I was, nor
whither I was going, but presently sprang up the steps of a house
before which were two or three carriages and in which were moving
lights and a subdued confusion of voices. It was the house of Mr.
Margovan.

You know, good friend, what had occurred there. In one chamber lay
Julia Margovan, hours dead by poison; in another John Stevens,
bleeding from a pistol wound in the chest, inflicted by his own hand.
As I burst into the room, pushed aside the physicians and laid my
hand upon his forehead he unclosed his eyes, stared blankly, closed
them slowly and died without a sign.

I knew no more until six weeks afterward, when I had been nursed back
to life by your own saintly wife in your own beautiful home. All of
that you know, but what you do not know is this--which, however, has
no bearing upon the subject of your psychological researches--at
least not upon that branch of them in which, with a delicacy and