Page:The Black Cat v01no05 (1896-02).pdf/23

Rh sound sleeper it occurred to me to softly kiss the little brown mole to which I have just referred—something I had not thought of since the days of our first short honeymoon so long ago.

"Carefully I pushed aside the masses of tumbled hair that lay across her soft white throat, and bent over her. No-the other side—but, surely—what did it mean? Her round neck of infantile whiteness and smoothness lay before me, but the little beauty spot was missing! Nor was there the slightest evidence that it had ever existed.

"I went downstairs and smoked a pipe on the piazza to think over this mystery. But the longer I thought, the less I under stood it.

"That evening I said to my wife: 'Sweetheart, where is the little brown mole that was just under your left ear?'

"For a moment she looked at me; then she said softly, but with a certain power in her voice: 'Have you forgotten your vow?'

"I stared a moment; then recalled my promise never to allude to the past. Somehow, it impressed me differently now than when I had first taken it. To be sure, I laughingly begged Leila's pardon, assuring her there would be no more lapses from rectitude in that direction. But from that moment a strange restlessness took possession of me. I felt something impending. In the morning I would wake with a singular sense of oppression, which when traced to its cause always arrived at the same starting-point,—the little brown mole which should have been on my wife's soft white throat, but was not.

"It was about this time that I noticed that there was not a likeness of Leila in the whole house. When I went away there were many scattered about—water-color sketches, paintings in oil, photographs, and etchings, for Leila had always been proud of her beauty. Now not one remained; even the oil-painting that had been finished, as companion to mine, just, after our first marriage, had been removed, though mine hung in its accustomed place. I was about to call attention to this fact and ask the reason, when I remembered that this circumstance, also, belonged to the past, concerning which I had promised never to question, and was silent.

My mind had now become so perturbed that it continually