of my brain was hard at work on those marks of catastrophe. I was
horribly wondering that she was still alive. It was impossible that
between her and that catastrophe there could be more than a few short
months. And all the time I was talking; and I suppose I acquitted myself
well, for I remember that when I ceased I had a sort of ovation from the
Elbourns.

"It was a relief to turn to another pair of hands. Mrs. Brett was an
amusing young creature, and her hands were very characteristic, and
prettily odd in form. I allowed myself to be rather whimsical about her
nature, and having begun in that vein, I went on in it, somehow, even
after she had turned her palms. In those palms were reduplicated the
signs I had seen in Mrs. Elbourn's. It was as though they had been copied
neatly out. The only difference was in the placing of them; and it was
this difference that was the most horrible point. The fatal age in Mrs.
Brett's hands was--not past, no, for here SHE was. But she might
have died when she was twenty-one. Twenty-three seemed to be the
utmost span. She was twenty-four, you know.

"I have said that I am a weak man. And you will have good proof
of that directly. Yet I showed a certain amount of strength that day--yes,
even on that day which has humiliated and saddened the rest of my life.
Neither my face nor my voice betrayed me when in the palms of Dorothy
Elbourn I was again confronted with those same signs. She was all for
knowing the future, poor child! I believe I told her all manner of things
that were to be. And she had no future--none, none in THIS
world--except--

"And then, while I talked, there came to me suddenly a suspicion. I
wondered it hadn't come before. You guess what it was? It made me