‘She wished you to take it,’ said Wyndham, who felt choking. Her blood seemed to lie heavily on him. Had he not seen, countenanced her murder? The Professor did not seem to hear him; his head had fallen forward, and he was muttering again. ‘She is dead!’ he whispered to himself. He made a vague but tragic gesture; and then, after a little while, ‘Dead!’ he said again. His head had sunk upon his breast. It was a strange scene. Here the Professor dying—out there the girl dead—and between them he, Paul Wyndham. What lay before him? He roused himself with an effort from his horrible thoughts, and made a faint effort to withdraw his hand from the Professor’s; but though the latter had fallen into a doze, he still felt the attempt at withdrawal, and tightened his clutch on Wyndham; and all at once it seemed to the young man as though the years had rolled backward, and he was still the pupil, and this old man his tutor, and the days were once more present when he had been ordered here and there, and had taken his directions from him, and loved and reverenced him, stern and repellent as he was, as perhaps no tutor had ever been reverenced before. After a little while the Professor’s grasp relaxed, and Wyndham rose to his feet. A shrinking from entering the room beyond was combated by a wild desire to go there and look once again upon the slender form of the girl lying in death’s sweet repose upon her couch. He went to the door, hesitated involuntarily for a second or two, and then entered. How still is death! And how apart! Nothing can approach it or move it. He looked at her long and earnestly, and all at once it came to him that she was beautiful. He had not thought her beautiful last night, but now the dignity of death had touched her, and her fear and her indifference and her despair had dropped from her, and the face shone lovely—the features chiselled, and a vague smile upon the small, closed lips. He noticed one thing, and it struck him as strange—that pinched look about the features that he had noticed an hour ago was gone now. The mouth was soft, the rounded chin curved as if in life. Almost there seemed a little bloom upon the pale, cold cheeks. With a heavy sigh he turned away, and, leaning his arm upon the mantelshelf, gave himself up a prey to miserable thought. The fire had died out long ago, and the morning was cold and raw, and from under the ill-fitting door a little harsh wind was rushing. The Professor, though actually a rich man, had never cared to change the undesirable house that had sheltered him when first he tried a fall with fortune, and, conquering it, came out at once to the front as a man not to be despised in the world of science. What was to be done? The Professor would have to see a doctor, even if the medical man were brought in without his knowledge. Would it be possible to remove the—that girl—and trust to to-night for her removal to——To where? Again he lost himself in a sea of agonized doubt and uncertainty.