“In the room beyond, the watchers sat. I stole softly across the floor so as not to attract their attention; there was no one in the room with the body. I approached the couch, and with my hand put by the curtain---- “Then I dropped it suddenly. I remembered a locket which she had formerly worn that had always had my picture in it, in the early days of our married life; a locket that had never left her neck, waking or sleeping. And I wondered---- “I wondered something about women which no one has ever been able to tell me; not even a woman. I wondered if any light o' love had ever been able to make her feel anything like _real_ love, after all! I wondered if she had ever hugged the thought of her sin to her bosom, even as she had at first hugged the thought of our real love--hers and mine. I wondered if she had ever carried about with her a sentimental reminder of her lover, of any lover, as she had once done of her husband--and how long ago! I wondered how important a thing it had seemed to her, after all! She had reconciled herself to herself, with her death, and made me love her again. And I wondered to how great an extent she had ever fooled a lover into thinking she loved him! There are depths and contradictions and cross-currents in the souls of women that even women do not know, far less men--I wondered whose picture was in that locket! “I thrust my hand through the curtains of the bed again, and then jumped back. “I had felt something warm there. “Did she live, after all? “At the same instant I heard a movement on the other side of the bed. I went around. “My best friend was removing his hand from the curtains on the other side, and in his hand was the locket. It was his hand that I had felt. “We stared at each other. I spoke first, and in a whisper, so that the others in the next room, who had come to watch, should not hear. “'I came for that,' I said. “'The locket? So did I,” he said. And then added quite simply, 'My picture is in it.' “'You lie!' I whispered, shaken by a wind of fury. And yet I knew that perhaps he did not lie, that what he said might well be true. Perhaps that was the cause of my fury. “His face was lined with a grief and weariness terrible to behold. To look at him you would have thought that there was nothing else in the world for him except grief. It was a great grief that made him careless of everything else. “'It is my picture,' he said. 'She loved me.' “'I say that you lie,' I repeated. 'She may have played with you--but she never loved any one but me--in her heart she never did!'