She followed me into the parlor, and the meeting passed off better than I had ventured to forecast; with this one drawback, that my mother--though she tried hard to control herself--shrank from looking my wife in the face when she spoke to her. It was a relief to me when Alicia began to prepare the table for dinner. She laid the cloth, brought in the bread tray, and cut some slices for us from the loaf. Then she returned to the kitchen. At that moment, while I was still anxiously watching my mother, I was startled by seeing the same ghastly change pass over her face which had altered it in the morning when Alicia and she first met. Before I could say a word, she started up with a look of horror. "Take me back!--home, home again, Francis! Come with me, and never go back more!" I was afraid to ask for an explanation; I could only sign her to be silent, and help her quickly to the door. As we passed the bread tray on the table, she stopped and pointed to it. "Did you see what your wife cut your bread with?" she asked. "No, mother; I was not noticing. What was it?" "Look!" I did look. A new clasp knife, with a buckhorn handle, lay with the loaf in the bread tray. I stretched out my hand to possess myself of it. At the same moment, there was a noise in the kitchen, and my mother caught me by the arm. "The knife of the Dream! Francis, I'm faint with fear--take me away before she comes back!" I couldn't speak to comfort or even to answer her. Superior as I was to superstition, the discovery of the knife staggered me. In silence, I helped my mother out of the house; and took her home. I held out my hand to say good-by. She tried to stop me. "Don't go back, Francis! don't go back!". "I must get the knife, mother. I must go back by the next train." I held to that resolution. By the next train I went back. XII My wife had, of course, discovered our secret departure from the house. She had been drinking. She was in a fury of passion. The dinner in the kitchen was flung under the grate; the cloth was off the parlor table. Where was the knife? I was foolish enough to ask for it. She refused to give it to me. In the course of the dispute between us which followed, I discovered that there was a horrible story attached to the knife. It had been used in a murder--years since--and had been so skillfully hidden that the authorities had been unable to produce it at the trial. By help of some of her disreputable friends, my wife had been able to purchase this relic of a bygone crime. Her perverted nature set some horrid unacknowledged value on the knife. Seeing there was no hope of getting it by fair means, I determined to search for it, later in the day, in secret. The search was unsuccessful. Night came on, and I left the house to walk about the streets. You will understand what a broken man I was by this time, when I tell you I was afraid to sleep in the same room with her!