BOOK III. CRIME

XXIII. THE DEAD HAND

XXIV. THE GATHERING CLOUDS

XXV. SUSPENSE: AND A DISCOVERY

XXVI. THE ADJOURNED INQUIRY

XXVII. THE INDICTMENT

XXVIII. THE VERDICT

EPILOGUE

Prologue

To every woman there comes a day (and that all too soon) when she

receives the first hint that Time, the harvester, has not passed her

by unnoticed. The waning of actual youth may have passed with but the

faintest regret, if any; regret for the lost bud being merged in the

triumph at the glory of the opening blossom. But the waning of

womanhood is another matter. Old age has no compensations to offer for

those delights that it steals away. At least, that is what I

understand from those who know, for I must still speak on the subject

from hearsay, having received from Father Time but the very faintest

and most delicate hint on the subject.

I was sitting at my dressing-table brushing out my hair, which is of a

docile habit, though a thought bulky, when amidst the black

tress--blacker than it used to be when I was a girl--I noticed a

single white hair. It was the first that I had seen, and I looked at

it dubiously, picking it out from its fellows to see if it were all

white, and noticing how like it was to a thread of glass. Should I

pluck it out and pretend that it was never there? Or should I, more

thriftily--for a hair is a hair after all, and enough of them will

make a wig--should I dye it and hush up its treason?

I smiled at the foolish thought. What a to-do about a single white

hair! I have seen girls in their twenties with snow-white hair and

looking as sweet as lavender. As to this one, I would think of it as a

souvenir from the troubled past rather than a harbinger of approaching

age; and with this I swept my brush over it and buried it even as I

had buried those sorrows and those dreadful experiences which might

have left me white-headed years before.

But that glassy thread, buried once more amid the black, left a legacy

of suggestion. Those hideous days were long past now. I could look

back on them unmoved--nay, with a certain serene interest. Suppose I

should write the history of them? Why not? To write is not necessarily

to publish. And if, perchance, no eye but mine shall see these lines

until the little taper of my life has burned down into its socket,

then what matters it to me whether praise or blame, sympathy or

condemnation, be my portion. Posterity has no gifts to offer that I

need court its suffrages.