“That was nerves.  I had a long talk with her, and I assure you she quite frightened me.  She spoke about the weariness of living;—­no, not as we talk of it, philosophically; there was a special accent of truth in what she said.  You remember the porter mentioned that she asked if No. 57 was occupied.  I believe that is the room where she used to meet her lover.  I believe they had had a quarrel, and that she went there intent on reconciliation, and finding him gone determined to kill herself.  She told me she had had a lover for the last four years.  I don’t know why she told me—­it was the first time I ever heard a lady admit she had had a lover; but she was in an awful state of nerve excitement, and I think hardly knew what she was saying.  She took the letter out of her bosom and read it slowly.  I couldn’t help seeing it was in a man’s handwriting; it began, ’Ma chere amie!’ I heard her tell her husband to take the brougham; that she would come home in a cab.  However, if my supposition is correct, I hope she burnt the letter.”

“Perhaps that’s what she lit the fire for.  Did you notice if the writing materials had been used?”

“No, I didn’t notice,” said Mike.  “And all so elaborately planned!  Just fancy—­shooting herself in a nice warm bed!  She was determined to do it effectually.  And she must have had the revolver in her pocket the whole time.  I remember now, I had gone out of the room for a moment, and when I came back she was leaning over the chimney-piece, looking at something.”

“I have often thought,” said Harding, “that suicide is the culminating point of a state of mind long preparing.  I think that the mind of the modern suicide is generally filled, saturated with the idea.  I believe that he or she has been given for a long time preceding the act to considering, sometimes facetiously, sometimes sentimentally, the advantages of oblivion.  For a long time an infiltration of desire of oblivion, and acute realization of the folly of living, precedes suicide, and, when the mind is thoroughly prepared, a slight shock or interruption in the course of life produces it, just as an odorous wind, a sight of the sea, results in the poem which has been collecting in the mind.”

“I think you might have the good feeling to forbear,” said Frank; “the present is hardly, I think, a time for epigrams or philosophy.  I wonder how you can talk so....”

“I think Frank is quite right.  What right have we to analyse her motives?”

“Her motives were simple enough; sad enough too, in all conscience.  Why make her ridiculous by forcing her heart into the groove of your philosophy?  The poor woman was miserably deceived; abominably deceived.  You do not know what anguish of mind she suffered.”

“There is nothing to show that she went to the Alexandra to meet a lover beyond the fact of a statement made to Mike in a moment of acute nervous excitement.  We have no reason to think that she ever had a lover.  I never heard her name mentioned in any such way.  Did you, Escott?”