But I will hasten to finish my story. Brevity is justified at once to those who readily understand, and to those who will never understand.
Some years after my father’s death, I was sitting by the dim firelight in my library one January evening—sitting in the leather chair that used to be my father’s—when Bertha appeared at the door, with a candle in her hand, and advanced towards me. I knew the ball-dress she had on—the white ball-dress, with the green jewels, shone upon by the light of the wax candle which lit up the medallion of the dying Cleopatra on the mantelpiece. Why did she come to me before going out? I had not seen her in the library, which was my habitual place for months. Why did she stand before me with the candle in her hand, with her cruel contemptuous eyes fixed on me, an
