Kirklan Gilmore's face was still white, haggardly drawn, but he was no longer the broken wreck of a man, tottering upon the brink of a mental collapse, that he had been some hours before. He seemed to have recovered from the first over-powering shock of horror; Doctor Bushnell's course in placing him under the influence of a sedative had apparently been a most wise one. At Sarbella's words his lips twitched piteously, but he managed to keep control of himself. "No," he said slowly, huskily, "I was in love with--with the woman I thought her to be--in love with an ideal, a creation of my own imagination. The woman I thought her to be did not exist--except in my own infatuated fancies. And she was not my wife. She----Oh, what a nightmare it's been--what a nightmare!" Doctor Bushnell stepped swiftly to his side and, taking his arm, urged him toward the house. "Keep a grip on yourself, Kirklan," he murmured in a kindly, paternal tone. "It's been a pretty terrible business, old man, but that thing we mortals call fate has cut a lot of the strings to the tangle for you. It is better that things are as they are; it saves a vast number of troublesome complications. It saves--well, trucking a lot of mire through the courts." Gilmore compressed his lips and lowered his head. "Yes," he agreed dully, "you're right about that; it saves the courts." "Buck up, Kirklan! As you say, the woman you thought her to be did not exist." "Ah," murmured Victor Sarbella, "but losing an ideal is one of the hardest things in life." The novelist, leaning a little on the doctor's friendly arm, made his way slowly into the house. Sarbella and Wiggly Price followed. "Have all the legal details been satisfied?" asked Gilmore, as he lowered himself into a chair. "There is, of course, no question but that----" "But that Haskins killed her," finished Doctor Bushnell. "Absolutely none, Kirklan. There remains now only the inquest--a double inquest in this case. One jury will suffice for both; the verdict, of course, is a foregone conclusion." There fell a brief silence, Gilmore's eyes staring straight in front of him, with a dull, vacant expression. No doubt he was thinking of the bronze-haired, beautiful woman who lay upstairs, cold in death--the woman who might have been. "Everything has become quite clear to me," he said slowly, more as if speaking to himself. "She was making a visit to this Haskins in New York day before yesterday, when Atchinson saw her on the street. She must have gone there in answer to a letter that my butler tells me she received that morning." "Atchinson?" Doctor Bushnell asked inquiringly. "My publisher," Gilmore replied. "Since she was employed by the publishing firm before our marriage, Atchinson knew her quite well. He said it was she, but I thought he must be mistaken. She had told me that she was going to motor into the country. I wonder how it would have all come out if the man, Haskins, had not been trapped in the storeroom?"