all, the sense of the tragedy would be far more acute and poignant
even than at present."

"Perhaps so," I said resolutely; "but not the sense of mystery. It's
THAT that appals me so! I'd rather know the truth than be so wrapped
up in the incomprehensible."

He looked at me pityingly once more.

"My poor child," he said, in the same gentle and fatherly voice,
"you don't wholly understand. It doesn't all come home to you. I can
see clearly, from what Inspector Wolferstan told me, after his visit
to you the other day--"

I broke in, in surprise.

"Inspector Wolferstan!" I cried. "Then he came down here to see you,
did he?"

It was horrible to find how all my movements were discussed and
chronicled.

"Yes, he came down here to see me and talk things over," Dr. Marten
went on, as calmly as if it were mere matter of course. "And I could
see from what he said you were still spared much. For instance, you
remember it all only as an event that happened to an old man with a
long white beard. You don't fully realise, except intellectually,
that it was your own father. You're saved, as a daughter, the misery
and horror of thinking and feeling it was your father who lay dead
there."