"You can separate from me if you will. I shall not venture to hinder you. But I swear you shall not do this rash act without knowledge. I tell you you must remain here. When you leave this house you do so in my company." "And why am I to be kept a prisoner?" "Mrs. Hillmer will return in less than an hour. You have sought this meeting yourself. Very well. You shall have it. When your charges have been thoroughly thrashed out in the presence of Mrs. Hillmer and myself I will then accompany you where you will, and leave you under the protection of your sister, or any one else you choose, should you still persist in leaving me." Of course my action was unwise to the last degree. But remember, Claude, that during these last awful five minutes I had seen a side of my wife's nature hidden from me six long years. And I was a man suddenly plunged into a raging sea, drifting helplessly I knew not whither. All that consumed me was a wild desire for such scant justice as I deserved. I had erred, but my faults were not those my wife alleged against me. If she was angry before she was now absolutely uncontrollable. "What?" she screamed. "Remain to meet your--your mistress? Never, while I have life!" She flung herself upon me so suddenly that she tore me away from the door. She was a strong and athletic woman, and I suppose she expected some resistance, for she used such force as to drag me forward into the middle of the room, overturning a chair in the effort. I was so utterly taken by surprise that I yielded to her violence more completely than she expected. She staggered, let go her hold, and fell heavily backwards, tripping over the fallen chair. I made a desperate attempt to save her, but only caught the end of a fur necklet, and it tore like a spider's web. Her body crashed against a Venetian fender, and her head came with awful force against a sort of support for the fire-irons that stood up a foot from the ground. Then she rolled over, her eyes and face undergoing a ghastly change, and instantly became, as I thought, unconscious. I knelt beside her, raising her head with my right hand, and brokenly besought her to speak to me, when I would at once do anything she demanded. But she gave no sign of animation. In a frenzy of despair, I forced myself to examine her injuries, and my heart nearly stopped beating when I discovered that a large piece of iron had been driven into her brain through the back of her head. I knew in a moment that she was dead. Although I have not had much experience of that terrible epoch in the human being, I have seen far too much of death in animal life not to know that she who had been my honored and respected wife now lay before me a mere soulless entity--a symbol only of the splendid vital creature who, a minute earlier, was angrily protesting against the supposed faithlessness of her mate.