“When I entered the house, I saw her at once. Her back was turned to me, and she was talking with a man I had not hitherto seen--evidently some inmate of the house whom we had not encountered the previous evening. The other room had been in use, I reflected, in a flash. He was stretched on a ramshackle sofa with some sort of animal skin thrown over him. He--but I won’t describe him. I know every feature of his face, though I saw him, all told, not more than five minutes, and have never seen him since. I have a notion”--Chalmers’s voice grew very precise, and his mouth looked more legal than ever--“that, when he wasn’t pulled down with a long illness and protracted suffering, he would be very good-looking. As it was, he was unhealthy white, like the wrong kind of ghost. One arm was quite limp. “At the instant I didn’t place him--naturally! But as soon as she turned her face to me, I did. Only one thing could have induced that look of horror--horror in every strained feature, like the mask of some one who has seen the Medusa. I started to her, but stopped almost before I started; for I saw immediately that I was the Gorgon. It was for me that her face had changed. God knows what, two minutes before, her face had been saying to that half-lifeless form. It was about _me_ that she felt like that. Since, with all the years to work it out in, I’ve seen why; but just at the moment I was overwhelmed. She sat down in a chair and covered her face with her hands. I heard the man babbling tragic and insignificant details. I can’t say I listened, but before I could pull myself together and leave, I caught mention of fever, accident, loss of memory, broken limbs, miraculous co-operation of fate for good and evil alike--the whole mad history, I suppose, from his side, of the past year. I have sometimes wished I had caught it more clearly, but just then I could take in nothing except the insulting fact that this was the man whose grave we had not found. That was what her face had told me in that horrid instant. I never saw her face again. It was still bowed on her hands when I went out of the door. “I don’t know how I got off--I don’t remember. I suppose I had the maniac’s speed. If I hadn’t been beside myself, I think I could recall more of what I did. The patriarchal creature under whose roof it had all happened helped me. I think I gave him a good many directions about the negroes and the kit. Or I may have paid them off, myself. I honestly don’t know. I know that I left nearly all of my money with him, and started off on horseback alone. I had a dull sense that I was causing her some practical difficulties, but I also had a very vivid sense that she would kill herself if she had to encounter me again. She had looked at me as if I were a monster from the mud. And the night before, on the verandah, in the lightning....” Chalmers stopped and looked at me. The brilliancy had gone out of his eyes. He said nothing more. “Well?” I asked finally.