And then one evening, just before dusk, when Margaret was in the garden, I had occasion to go up to my dressing-room for some papers. I opened the door. There was a coffin almost at my feet, housing a shrouded figure. There was a dark patch where the head of this figure should have been, and from it came something which slithered writhing down the shroud, and then the figure began slowly to rise. I shut the door and cowered shuddering in the passage. When I felt I had strength to move I went down, drank a glass of brandy, and kept out of Margaret’s way till dinner. But by that time she was seriously frightened about me and watching me closely, so she knew at once I had had a “relapse.” I assured her that such ups and downs were to be expected, but agreed to go up to London with her for a change. Anything to make her happy, and one place was as good as another to one in my case. We went up the next day. I was out alone seeing my publisher the next morning, and when I got back to the hotel I asked the lift-attendant if my wife was in. He said she was, as he’d seen a lady entering our suite. She was not there, however, so I asked him if he was quite certain, and he said that he was. Just then his bell rang, and a moment later he came up again with Margaret. His face was a study in astonishment. I tipped him and told him it was all right. I imagine he suspected that Salt Lake City was my spiritual home. I only mention this little incident, Weldon, as evidence that these appearances were, up to a point at least, perceived by others, and therefore some evidence of my sanity. What undermined and pierced me was that as my life grew more shadowed Margaret and I were being prised apart. She was still my darling, and the fact that she loved me the sole justification for my living, but I felt I was living in an extra dimension, as it were, that the shadow of what I had done and what I was suffering was erecting a barrier between us, and soon I should be alone with my secret, isolated and yet in some deadly way still Ethel’s husband. I could see that Margaret felt this vaguely, too, and that she knew something was sweeping us apart. I used to wonder miserably how I seemed to her, and what torturing, confused, despairing realisation must have come to her. If only I could have told her! But her belief in me was all I had to cling to, and I could not tell her that I had flung Ethel down those steps! And yet, if I could have got my hands on Ethel’s throat, I’d have been a murderer again. That obscene, meagre, despicable, mercenary, murdered fool! The best thing I ever did was to crack that evil little skull. She may have had her revenge, but if there are steps in Hell--melodrama! and likely to make a bad impression on you, my dear Weldon.