He entered the passage. She spoke words to him the import of which he did not catch. His brain was perplexed by the guard of policemen and the open flat. She led him a short distance down the passage. He stumbled over a packed kit-bag. She threw open a door. He crossed the threshold of a vulgarly furnished drawing-room, the electric lights turned on despite the daylight of the July evening. There were four figures in the room. Standing and scribbling in note-books were two men, one in the uniform of a sergeant of police, the other in a frock-coat, obviously a medical man. On the floor were two women, both dead. One was John Risca's wife, and the other was Unity. And near by them lay a new, bright revolver. CHAPTER XXIII IN after-time Herold's memory of that disastrous night and the succeeding days was that of a peculiarly lucid nightmare in which he seemed to have acted without volition or consciousness of motive. He ate, dressed, drove through the streets on unhappy missions, gave orders, directions, consoled, like an automaton, and sometimes slept exhaustedly. So it seemed to him, looking back. He spared John the first night of misery. The man with his bandaged head slept like a log, and Herold did not wake him. All that could be done he himself had done. It was better for John to gather strength in sleep to face the tragedy on the morrow. And when the morrow came, and Herold broke the news to him, the big man gave way under the shock, and became gentle, and obeyed Herold like a child. Thereafter, for many days, he sat for the hour together with his old aunt, curiously dependent on her; and she, through her deep affection for him, grew singularly silent and practical. In her unimaginative placidity lay her strength. She mourned for Unity as for her own flesh and blood; but the catastrophe did not shake her even mind, and when John laid his head in her lap and sobbed, all that was beautiful in the woman flowed through the comforting tips of her helpless fingers. From Herold he learned the unsuspected reason of Unity's crime and sacrifice; and from Unity, too, for a poor little pencil scrawl found in her pocket and addressed to him told him of her love and of her intention to clear the way for his happiness. And when the inquest was over and Unity's body was brought to Kilburn and laid in its coffin in her little room, he watched by it in dumb stupor of anguish.