Page:The Fate of Fenella (1892).djvu/133

 "How did you come to see—to see it. Why did you take no step to prevent it? Forgive me, old fellow, but I want to understand."

Frank Onslow went to the rail, and leaned over. When he came back Castleton saw that his eyes were wet. With what cheerfulness he could assume, he answered:

"On that very night I had made up my mind to try to win back my wife's love. I wrote a letter to her, a letter in which 1 poured out my whole soul, and I left my room to put it under her door, so that she would get it in the morning. But"—here he paused, and then said, slowly, "but when in the corridor, I saw her door open, and at the same moment De Mürger appeared."

"Did she seem surprised?"

"Not at first. But a moment after a look of amazement crossed her face, and she stepped back into the room, he following her." As he said this he put his head between his hands and groaned.

"And then?" added his friend.

"And then I hardly know what happened. My mind seems full of a dim memory of a blank existence, and then a series of wild whirling thoughts, something like that last moment after death in Wiertz's picture. I think I must have slept, for it was two o'clock when I saw Fenella, and the clock was striking five when I crossed the bridge after I had left the hotel."