"Jasmine, if only you would ... oh, yes, that is all I ask, all I want, my darling woman, all I ... you remember it all, don't you? ... yes ... oh, it was her fault ... he wouldn't otherwise have killed her ... oh, no, discovery is impossible, the ... it was quite unrecognizable.... The Four Faces—ha! ha! ... I myself saw it, black, charred beyond all hope of recognition ... he did right to ... dear, I should have done the same...." Between these scraps of sentences were words impossible to catch the meaning of, so indistinctly were they uttered, some being said beneath his breath, some muttered and inarticulate, some little more than murmurings. He moved restlessly on the bed. Then his eyes slowly closed, and for a minute he lay still. And then, all at once, he seemed to spring back into life. "Mother!" he shouted suddenly in quite a strong voice. He started up in bed, and now sat erect and still, his wide-stretched eyes staring straight before him. The nurse had, at Sir Roland's request, left the room before the stranger had begun to speak to him. Now, opening the door quickly, Sir Roland called to her to return. The stranger's eyes were fixed. Motionless he sat there glaring, as it seemed to us, at some figure facing him. Instinctively we followed the direction of his gaze, but naught was visible to us save the artistic pattern upon the pink-tinted wall-paper opposite the foot of the bed. His lips were slightly parted, now. We saw them move as though he spoke rapidly, but no words came. And then, all at once, he smiled. "The Four Faces!" he repeated, almost inaudibly. It was not a vacant smile, not the smile of a man mentally deficient, but a smile charged with meaning, with intelligent expression; a smile of delight, of greeting—a smile full of love. It was the first time we had seen a smile, or anything approaching one, upon his face, and in an instant it revealed how handsome the man had been. "Mother!" This time the word was only murmured, a murmur so low as to be barely audible. The fellow's pyjama jacket, one Sir Roland Challoner had lent to him, had become unfastened at the throat, and now I noticed that a thin gold chain was round his neck, and that from it there depended a flat, circular locket. Sir Roland was seated close beside the bed. Almost as I noticed this locket, he saw it too. I saw him bend forward a little, and take it in his fingers, and turn it over. I could see it distinctly from where I sat. Upon the reverse side was a miniature—the portrait of a woman—a woman of forty-five or so, very beautiful still, a striking face of singular refinement. Yes, there could be no doubt whatever—the eyes of the miniature bore a striking likeness to the stranger's, which now gazed at nothing with that fixed, unmeaning stare.