"No! If I had meant it I would have done it.... Hubert, for my children's sake, I WILL not commit suicide!" "Then listen!" I cried. I told him in a few words of his sister's scheme--Sebastian's defence--the plausibility of the explanation--the whole long story. He gazed at me moodily. Yet it was not Hugo! "No, no," he said, shortly; and as he spoke it was HE. "I have done it; I have killed her; I will not owe my life to a falsehood." "Not for the children's sake?" He dashed his hand down impatiently. "I have a better way for the children. I will save them still.... Hubert, you are not afraid to speak to a murderer?" "Dear Hugo--I know all; and to know all is to forgive all." He grasped my hand once more. "Know ALL!" he cried, with a despairing gesture. "Oh, no; no one knows ALL but myself; not even the children. But the children know much; THEY will forgive me. Lina knows something; SHE will forgive me. You know a little; YOU forgive me. The world can never know. It will brand my darlings as a murderer's children." "It was the act of a minute," I interposed. "And--though she is dead, poor lady, and one must speak no ill of her--we can at least gather dimly, for your children's sake, how deep was the provocation." He gazed at me fixedly. His voice was like lead. "For the children's sake--yes," he answered, as in a dream. "It was all for the children! I have killed her--murdered her--she has paid her penalty; and, poor dead soul, I will utter no word against her--the woman I have murdered! But one thing I will say: If omniscient justice sends me for this to eternal punishment, I can endure it gladly, like a man, knowing that so I have redeemed my Marian's motherless girls from a deadly tyranny." It was the only sentence in which he ever alluded to her. I sat down by his side and watched him closely. Mechanically, methodically, he went on with his dressing. The more he dressed, the less could I believe it was Hugo. I had expected to find him close-shaven; so did the police, by their printed notices. Instead of that, he had shaved his beard and whiskers, but only trimmed his moustache; trimmed it quite short, so as to reveal the boyish corners of the mouth--a trick which entirely altered his rugged expression. But that was not all; what puzzled me most was the eyes--they were not Hugo's. At first I could not imagine why. By degrees the truth dawned upon me. His eyebrows were naturally thick and shaggy--great overhanging growth, interspersed with many of those stiff long hairs to which Darwin called attention in certain men as surviving traits from a monkey-like