A few minutes later--I have no recollec-
tion of the intermediate time--I found myself hur-
rying 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 phy-
sicians and laid my hand upon his forehead he un-
closed his eyes, stared blankly, closed them slowly
and died without a sign.
I knew no more until six weeks afterwards, 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 consid-
eration all your own, you have asked for less as-
sistance than I think I have given you:
One moonlight night several years afterward I
was passing through Union Square. The hour was
late and the square deserted. Certain memories of
the past naturally came into my mind as I came to
the spot where I had once witnessed that fateful
assignation, and with that unaccountable perversity
which prompts us to dwell upon thoughts of the most
painful character I seated myself upon one of the
benches to indulge them.
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