If he heard the door open, he neither moved nor stirred. He never once looked up as his aunt came forward; his eyes were riveted upon that ineffably calm face with a vacant, sightless sort of stare that chilled her blood.
"Victor!" she cried out, in a frightened voice; "Victor speak to me.
For pity's sake, don't look like that?"
The dull, blinded eyes looked up at her, full of infinite, unutterable despair.
"She is dead," he said, in a slow, dragging sort of voice—"dead! And last night I left her well and happy—left her to be murdered—to—be—murdered."
The slow words fell heavily from his lips—his eyes went back to her face, his dulled mind seemed lapsing into its stupefied trance of quiet. More and more alarmed, his aunt gazed at him. Had the death of his wife turned his brain?
"Victor!" she exclaimed, almost angrily, "you must rouse yourself. You must not stay here. Be a man! Wake up. Your wife has been murdered. Go and find her murderer."
"Her murderer," he replied, in the same slow tone of unnatural quiet; "her murderer. It seems strange, Aunt Helena, doesn't it, that any one could murder her? 'I must find her murderer.' Oh," he cried, suddenly, in a voice of anguish; "what does it matter about her murderer! It won't bring her back to life. She is dead I tell you—dead!"
He flung himself off his chair, on his knees by the couch. He drew down the white satin counterpane, and pointed to that one dark, small stab on the left side.
"Look!" he said, in a shrill, wailing voice, "through the heart—through the heart! She did not suffer—the doctors say that. Through the heart as she slept. Oh, my love, my darling, my wife!"
He kissed the wound—he kissed the hands, the face, the hair. Then with a long, low moan of utter desolation, he drew back the covering and buried his face in it.