“From a distance,” repeated De Medici, “my gestures seem to change. They become slower. And my jaw shifts curiously to a side. My eyes droop and I keep staring out of their corners. The fears leave me, however. There is nothing to fear in this dream. Last night I sat there staring at the curtains and waiting. But there was no fear. And finally the hallucination came. As it did once before on the night of the murder. I was in the apartment and she appeared for an instant in the doorway. The Francesca one ... her hair down and a band circling her forehead. I knew last night she would come again. And she did. I sat looking at Florence—a Florence you don’t know.... Cold, cruel with a wild gleam to her.... A long robe and a dagger in her hand. She smiles at me and I feel my heart dissolve with rapture. The dream is horrible and beautiful. An exultation comes into me.” “And are you aware of its unreality at the moment?” Dr. Lytton asked quietly. “Alas, yes! I watch from a distance. I repeat to myself—‘a hallucination.’ But even then there is something truthful about her. Even though I know I dream the image, it appears to me as psychologically true. The woman with the dagger is Florence....” De Medici moved slowly down the room. As he stood against the darkened curtains, his face glowed uncertainly toward the doctor. “We must save her,” he whispered. Dr. Lytton grunted. “Yes,” he agreed, “if you can keep your head clear of these obsessions of yours. Yet——” He paused and stared at De Medici. “Curious,” he resumed. “It fits in. That vision of yours. Yes, an odd psychological phenomenon. I have had a similar image in my mind for a week.” De Medici’s voice had undergone a change when he spoke again. It was crisp and with a precision in its sound. “Now tell me, Hugo,” he asked, “what you’ve found.” “First,” countered the doctor, “what are you hiding? Your consciousness of her guilt is not as pathologic as you would make out. The telephone call and all the rest are good enough. But you were there that night. The first to see her. You saw something ... found something.” De Medici nodded as the doctor’s eyes glittered at him. Moving to the table he opened a drawer and removed the purse he had picked up in the Ballau library. “In the chair near the body,” he explained. “It has her initials in the corner. And inside a theater program for a performance of ‘Iris’ in a London theater in 1899.” Dr. Lytton reached for the object with an exclamation. His hands seized it and, thrusting it into the light of the candles, he remained lost in an ecstatic contemplation of it. “Good God!” he muttered abruptly. “I knew it. Yes, I was right.” De Medici smiled slowly at the scientist’s elation.