The sentence was caught up on a gasp. It was never completed. Bessie's room had been transformed into a little mortuary chapel. Everything in it had been removed and the walls hung from ceiling to floor in grim black draperies. The effect was startling in the extreme; it had been designed to startle. In the center of the room, the sole object it contained, rested a plain black coffin on a severely draped bier. Six tall candles stood about the head lighting the face of the corpse strangely. It was the face of de Silva--peaceful, waxen, and faintly yellow. Greg fascinated watched de Socotra. Amy disdained to look at him. Her gaze was bent like Nemesis on the poor clay. De Silva's face showed a dignity it had never known in life. One saw the man he might have been. Stilled now was the wild spirit that had been touched too late by kindness. De Socotra's bronzed face turned gray, and a network of tiny dark veins showed under his skin. One realized the man's age. He breathed like something hurt. But he kept his back straight and his gaze never faltered from the dead man's face. "Where did you--where did you--" he began twice, but did not finish. Amy without speaking pointed to a note pinned on de Silva's breast. De Socotra, seeing that he was expected to read it, came forward. His nostrils twitched, a pained look showed deep in his eyes; one guessed that it afflicted him with nausea to approach the body of his hired assassin, but his iron will was not yet broken. He stooped, and in the light of the candles began to read with a sneer. It was the note de Silva had left for Greg. As he realized what it implied, de Socotra sharply straightened, and for an instant looked wildly around like a trapped creature. But he quickly controlled himself. He turned his back on the coffin. "So this is your proof," he said, and God knows what effort it cost him to bring it out so nonchalantly; "but he's dead, too!" "Follow me," said Amy. She opened the door that communicated with Bessie's parlor. An overpowering breath of sweetness was wafted forth. She passed in. De Socotra followed to the door, walking steadily, but with a gait somewhat stiffer than his wont. At the door he put out a hand to steady himself. His eyes looked wildly around the next room, and he drew back a little as if his flesh refused to be subjected to a further horror. This room, too, was a resting-place of the dead, but with a difference. Great, many-branched candlesticks stood around this rich bier flooding the room with a pale gold light. Roses pink and white and red were everywhere; sheaves of roses heaped on the coffin and strewn on the pall. Amy's expression was very different as she stood beside this bier. She was still a marble woman, but it was a marble head of grief. Her hands involuntarily went to her breast. She gazed down, oblivious alike to de Socotra and to Greg. Greg looked at her and experienced the meaning of adoration.