sight forever.

No, I could not realise that she had departed beyond recall. In mad desperation I kissed her brow in an attempt to revivify her. At that moment her sweet voice seemed raised within me, but it was a voice of remembrance that brought hot tears to my eyes.

A second later I sprang up, startled by a loud knocking at the door of the room. The unknown onlookers, breathless and silent, exchanged glances of abject terror. “Hark!” I cried. “What’s that?”

“Hush!” they commanded fiercely. For a few seconds there was a dead silence, then the summons was repeated louder than before, as a deep voice outside cried:

“Open the door. We are police officers, and demand admittance in the name of the law.”

Upon the small assembly the words fell like a thunderbolt.

“They have come!” gasped one of the women, pale and trembling. She was of middle age, and wore an elaborate toilette with a magnificent necklet of pearls.

“Silence! Make no answer,” the man who had conducted me from Richmond whispered anxiously. “They may pass on, and we may yet escape.”

“Escape!” I echoed, looking from one to the other; “what crime have you committed?”

A third time the knocking was repeated, when suddenly there was a loud crash, and the door, slowly breaking from its hinges, fell, with its silken portiere, heavily into the room as three detectives, springing over it, dashed towards us.

“See! there she is!” cried one of the men authoritatively, pointing to Sybil. “Arrest her!”

The two others dashed forward to execute their inspector’s orders, but as they did so the clergyman stepped quickly before her chair, and, raising his bony hand, cried:

“Back, I command you! Back! The lady for whose arrest I presume you hold a warrant has, alas! gone to where she is not amenable to the law of man.”

The men halted, puzzled.

“What do you mean?” cried the inspector.

“Look for yourselves, gentlemen,” the man answered calmly. Then, in a voice full of emotion he added, “She is dead!”

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