I realized to what depths of evil my nature could sink under a disappointment threatening the fulfillment of my ambitious projects.  Had there been any prospect of escape from the impending scandal by means usually employed by men in my position, I might have given my thoughts less rein and been saved at least from crime.  But these were not available in my case.  She was not a woman who could be bought.  She was not even one I could cajole.  Death only would rid me of her; kindly death which does not come at call.  This is as far as my thoughts went at first.  I was a gentleman and had some of a gentleman’s feelings.  But when my sleep began to be disturbed by dreams, and this was very soon, I could not hide from myself toward what fatal goal my thoughts were tending.  To be freed from her!  To be freed from her! dinned itself in my ears, sleeping or waking, at home or abroad.  But I saw no plain road to this freedom, for our paths never crossed and my honor as well as safety demanded that the coveted result should be without any possible danger to myself.  Cold, heartless villain! you say.  Well, so I was; no colder nor more heartless villain lives to-day than I was between the inception of my purpose and its diabolical fulfillment in the manner publicly known.

“So true is this that, as time went on, my ideas cleared and the plan for which I was seeking unfolded itself before me from the day I came upon a discarded bow lying open to view in the museum cellar.  The dreams of which I have spoken had prepared me for this sudden knowledge.  The woman who blocked my way and against whom I meditated this crime was connected in my mind with Alpine scenery and Alpine events.  It was at Lucerne I had first met her, young and fresh, but giving no promise of the woman she has since become; and in the visions which came and went before my eyes, it was not herself I saw so much as the surroundings of those days, and the feats of prowess by which I had hoped to win her approbation.  Among these was the shooting at a small target with a bow and arrow.  I became very proficient in this line.  I shot as by instinct.  I could never tell whether I really took aim or not, but the arrow infallibly hit the mark.  In my dreams I always saw it flying, and when this bow came to hand a thought of what the two might accomplish came with it.  Yet even then I had no real idea of putting into practice this fancy of a distempered brain.  I brought the bow up from the cellar and hid it unstrung in the Curator’s closet, more from idle impulse I fondly thought, than from any definite purpose.  Another day I saw the Curator’s keys lying on his desk and took them to open a passage to the upper floor.  But for all that, I felt sure that I would never use the bow even after I had thrust it near to hand behind the tapestry masking the secret entrance to this passage.  One dreams of such things but they do not perpetrate them.  I might approach the deed, I might even make every