moment consciousness had left him! Evidently this intrusive little
body did not know Bela or his story, or--

Why should interruption come then? Why was he stopped, when in the
passion of the moment, he might have let fall some word of
enlightenment which would have eased the agitated curiosity of the
whole town! Miss Weeks often asked herself this question, and
bewailed the sudden access of sounds in the rooms without, which
proclaimed the entrance of the police and put a new strain upon
the judge's faculty of self-control and attention to the one
matter in hand.

The commonplaces of an official inquiry were about to supersede
the play of a startled spirit struggling with a problem of whose
complexities he had received but a glimpse.




V

"SHE WORE PURPLE"


The library again! but how changed! Evening light now instead of
blazing sunshine; and evening light so shaded that the corners
seemed far and the many articles of furniture, cumbering the
spaces between, larger for the shadows in which they stood hidden.
Perhaps the man who sat there in company with the judge regretted
this. Perhaps, he would have preferred to see more perfectly that