I have never known just how the next moments went. She recognized me instantly, and evidently to her dismay. I know that before I could shape my lips to any words that should be spoken, she had had time to sit down and to suggest, by some motion of her hand, that I should do the same. I did not sit; I stood before her. It was only when she began some phrase of conventional surprise at seeing me in that place of all places that I found speech. I made nothing of it; I had no solution; yet my message seemed too urgent for delay. All that I had suffered in my so faint connection with Filippo Upcher’s tragedy returned to me in one envenomed pang. I fear that I wanted most, at the moment, to pass that pang on to the woman before me. My old impatience of her type, her cheap mysteriousness, her purposeless inscrutability possessed me. I do not defend my mood; I only give it to you as it was. I have often noticed that crucial moments are appallingly simple to live through. The brain constructs the labyrinth afterwards. All perplexities were merged for me just then in that one desire--to speak, to wound her. But my task was not easy, and I have never been proud of the fashion of its performance. “Mrs. Wace” (even the subtle van Vreck could not have explained why I did not give her her own name), “is it possible--but I pray Heaven it is--that you don’t know?” “Know?” It was the voice of a stone sphinx. “How can I tell you--how can I tell you?” “What?” “About Filippo.” “Filippo?” “Yes, Filippo! That he is dead.” “Dead?” The carved monosyllables were maddening. “Yes--killed. Tried, sentenced, _executed_.” Her left hand dropped limply from the lace at her throat to a ruffle of her dress. “For what?” Her voice vibrated for the first time. “For murdering you.” “Me?” She seemed unable to take it in. “You must have seen the papers.” “I have seen no papers. Does one leave the world as utterly as I have left it, to read newspapers? On a lonely ranch like this”--she broke off. “I haven’t so much as seen one for five months. I--I--” Then she pulled herself together. “Tell me. This is some horrid farce. What do you mean? For God’s sake, man, tell me!” She sat back to hear. I cannot remember the words in which I told her. I sketched the thing for her--the original mystery, breaking out at last into open scandal when the dismembered body was found; the evidence (such of it as I could bring myself to utter in the presence of that so implicated figure); the course of the trial; Filippo’s wretched defence; the verdict; the horrid, inevitable result. My bitterness grew with the story, but I held myself resolutely to a tone of pity. After all--it shot across my mind--Filippo Upcher had perhaps in the grave found peace.