The Argosy, Vol. XXV, No. 1 — page 106: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

106 BY RIGHT OF SWORD. In the afternoon of the day but one after the funeral I had a brief note asking me to call on her. J went and found her surrounded by all the signs and trappings of the deepest mourning. She received me very gravely, and while there was any one in the room she played the part of the sorrowing, disconsolate widow ; but the instant we were alone she showed a most inde- cent and revolting haste to let me know her mind. ‘‘ We are alone now, Alexis,’’ she said. ‘‘T have called as you asked and because I wished to express my sym- pathy ‘s ‘“Psh! Don’t let us be hypocrites, you and I,’’ she exclaimed, half angrily, and with great energy. ‘‘I do not pretend to you that I am sorry to be free, and don’t you pretend to me either.’’ I didn’t answer, and my silence irritated her. ‘‘Would you have mie weep, tear my hair, put ashes on my head and grovel in the dust because the biggest villain and coward that ever lived in human shape is dead? I hated him living; shall I love him dead ?”’ ‘* At least the dead are dead, and to revile them is mere empty brutality,’’ said I, somewhat harshly. 7 ‘Then I like empty brutality if it relieves my feelings. I have been a hypocrite long enough. I should hate myself if I did not speak the truth to you,’”’ I shrugged my shoulders. I had no answer. ‘(Why didn’t you send a wreath of pure white flowers as an emblem of your regard? Why not a message to swell the millions of lies that men have uttered in their squalid fear of offending the government by silence? Ugh! It makes me sick when I think of it all; ’’ and she shuddered as if in disgust. ‘He was a fiend, and I won’t call him by any softer name merely because his power to harmis gone. Didn’t he try to murder you? And wasn’t it jealousy? Ah, we have much to be thankful to the Nihilists for, you and 1.”’ There was an indescribable suggestion of a hidden meaning about this. I hated the woman. ‘Vou have no clue yet, I suppose ?”’ ‘Ves, I have a clue,’’ she replied, with a laugh that sounded like a threat. ‘‘I can put my hand on the murderer when I will—and I will, if he proves a traitor.” ‘* Vou are in a dramatic mood,’’ I answered. ‘‘Whoisthe man? Why not denounce him? Surely this act is what you must call treachery.”’ ‘There was a Nihilist plot to kill the man,’’ she said, speaking with con- temptuous flippancy of the dead. ‘Yes, I told you that myself,’’ I replied. ‘‘TIt was because of that he died.’’ ‘*So everybody thinks.”’ ‘‘ And how do you account for it?’’ she asked, looking at me keenly. ‘‘T have no more idea than yourself.”’ She laughed, and a hard, forced laugh it was. ‘Then she got up from her chair and walked twice up and down the room in dead silence. She stopped in front of me and stared down into my eyes. Eomichbooks (E@)