contradiction to all our usual ways and accepted notions of life
and its value, that most of us are willing enough to accept the
familiar explanation of insanity, or any other commonplace cause
which may be alleged--financial trouble, or some passionate
entanglement, and the fear of scandal and exposure. And then the
Suicide is forgotten as soon as possible, and his memory
shuffled out of the way as something unpleasant to think of. But
with a curiosity that is perhaps a little morbid, I sometimes
let my thoughts dwell on these cases, wondering whether the dead
man may not have carried to the grave with him the secret of
some strange perplexity, some passion or craving or irresistible
impulse, of which perhaps his intimates, and certainly the
coroner's jury, can have had no inkling.

I had never met or spoken to Sir Eustace Carr--the worlds we
lived in were very different--but I had read of his explorations
in the East, and of the curious tombs he had discovered--somewhere,
was it not?--in the Nile Valley. Then too it happened (and this
was the main cause of my interest) that at one time I had seen
him more than once, under circumstances that were rather unusual.
And now I began to think of this incident. In away it was nothing,
and yet the impression haunted me that it was somehow connected
with this final act, for which no explanation, beyond that of
sudden mental derangement, had been offered. This explanation did
not seem to me wholly adequate, although it had been accepted,
I believe, both by his friends and the general public--and with
the more apparent reason on account of a strain of eccentricity,
amounting in some cases almost to insanity, which could be traced,
it was said, in his mother's family.