The next evening I came late to my lodgings. The events of the previous evening had made me nervous and ill; I had tried to cure myself and attain to clear thinking by walking in the open air, but I was op-pressed with a horrible presentiment of evil--a pre-sentiment which I could not formulate. It was a chill, foggy night; my clothing and hair were damp and Ishook with cold. In my dressing-gown and slippers before a blazing grate of coals I was even more un-comfortable. I no longer shivered but shuddered--there is a difference. The dread of some impending calamity was so strong and dispiriting that I tried to drive it away by inviting a real sorrow--tried to dispel the conception of a terrible future by substi-tuting the memory of a painful past. I recalled the death of my parents and endeavoured to fix my mind upon the last sad scenes at their bedsides and their graves. It all seemed vague and unreal, as hav-ing occurred ages ago and to another person. Sud-denly, striking through my thought and parting it as a tense cord is parted by the stroke of steel--Ican think of no other comparison--I heard a sharp cry as of one in mortal agony! The voice was that of my brother and seemed to come from the street out-side my window. I sprang to the window and threw it open. A street lamp directly opposite threw a wan and ghastly light upon the wet pavement and the fronts of the houses. A single policeman, with upturned collar, was leaning against a gatepost, quietly smoking a cigar. No one else was in sight.
I closed the window and pulled down the shade, seated myself before the fire and tried to fix my mind upon my surroundings. By way of assisting, by per-formance of some familiar act, I looked at my watch;it marked half-past eleven. Again I heard that aw-ful cry! It seemed in the room--at my side. I was frightened and for some moments had not the power to move. A few minutes later--I have no recollec-tion of the intermediate time--I found myself hur-rying along an unfamiliar street as fast as I could walk. I did not know where I was, nor whither I was going, but presently sprang up the steps of a house before which were two or three carriages and in which were moving lights and a subdued confusion of voices. It was the house of Mr. Margovan.
You know, good friend, what had occurred there.
In one chamber lay Julia Margovan, hours dead by poison; in another John Stevens, bleeding from a pistol wound in the chest, inflicted by his own hand.
As I burst into the room; pushed aside the phy-sicians and laid my hand upon his forehead he un-closed his eyes, stared blankly, closed them slowly and died without a sign.
I knew no more until six weeks afterwards, when I had been nursed back to life by your own saintly wife in your own beautiful home. All of that you know, but what you do not know is this--which, however, has no bearing upon the subject of your psychological researches--at least not upon that branch of them in which, with a delicacy and consid-eration all your own, you have asked for less as-sistance than I think I have given you:
One moonlight night several years afterward Iwas passing through Union Square. The hour was late and the square deserted. Certain memories of the past naturally came into my mind as I came to the spot where I had once witnessed that fateful assignation, and with that unaccountable perversity which prompts us to dwell upon thoughts of the most painful character I seated myself upon one of the benches to indulge them. A man entered the square and came along the walk toward me. His hands were clasped behind him, his head was bowed; he seemed to observe nothing. As he approached the shadow in which I sat I recognized him as the man whom Ihad seen meet Julia Margovan years before at that spot. But he was terribly altered--grey, worn and haggard. Dissipation and vice were in evidence in every look; illness was no less apparent. His cloth-ing was in disorder, his hair fell across his forehead in a derangement which was at once uncanny, and picturesque. He looked fitter for restraint than lib-erty--the restraint of a hospital.
With no defined purpose I rose and confronted him. He raised his head and looked me full in the face. I have no words to describe the ghastly change that came over his own; it was a look of unspeakable terror--he thought himself eye to eye with a ghost.
But he was a courageous man. 'Damn you, John Stevens!' he cried, and lifting his trembling arm he dashed his fist feebly at my face and fell headlong upon the gravel as I walked away.
Somebody found him there, stone-dead. Nothing more is known of him, not even his name. To know of a man that he is dead should be enough.
