Dolff was like a devil incarnate as he swooped down upon his victim and beat his head against the stones. The moment he had done it--the moment he had done it, he became a horrified, miserable, remorseful boy, miserable beyond any words to describe. As soon as he heard that dull thud on the pavement, and saw the white face turn unconscious in a blank which he never doubted to be that of death, his own being came back to him. His passion ended like the blowing out of a candle. What had he done? What had he done? Instinctively he sprang back under the shadow of the tree and the wall; but he had no thought of escape, or of anything but the dreadful thing he had done. After a minute, when other people crowded round the prostrate figure, he stole among the crowd and entered with them, pushing like the rest through the narrow doorway, as if he, too, were a spectator, to know all that happened. After the first awful sobering and coming to himself, there came over him a passion of eagerness and curiosity--a desire to know which for the moment made him feel himself a spectator, too. He even asked the other lads who crowded in along with him what it was, what had happened, and heard half-a-dozen versions of his own deed as he shouldered his way on to get a place near the door, with a strange feeling of being cut off from the house and all in it, of being but a wretched spectator and inquirer, though with that misery in his veins like molten fire. What was to hinder him pushing his way among them, going in boldly, he whom nobody could suspect, the son of the house, to see what was the matter? But Dolff could not do it. Janet had been stronger of mind than he. She had managed to disengage herself at once from the tumult, to steal in while attention was diverted from her, to escape in the darkness and confusion. And so might he have done: but he was incapable of thinking of himself or his own safety, though instinct made him herd among the intruders, concealing himself in the crowd. What he wanted to see was what had happened, whether it was real, and the man killed, or if it were only, as he almost hoped, a dreadful dream. He heard it said that the gentleman was not dead, but it conveyed no impression to his mind, and he pushed forward, peering over the shoulders of the others who crowded and gazed at the unknown interior, with a horrible sense of familiarity yet distance. There was the couch wheeled out of the library, the couch on which he had himself lounged so often; there was Gussy, clasping her hands together as if to keep herself up, standing as pale as death by the foot of the couch; there was--heaven! was it Janet standing behind, half concealing herself in the other’s shadow? It was not Janet then, he said in his dull brain--not Janet that was the cause of it all, only some horrible delusion to tempt him to his fate. There had been nothing wrong except in him. He it was alone who had been to blame. She could