“Do you know how vilely you’ve treated me?” she said, staring across the space at him. He averted his face.

Yet he answered, not without irony.

“I suppose so.”

“And why?” she cried. “I should like to know why.”

He did not answer. The way she rushed in made him go vague.

“Justify yourself. Say why you’ve been so vile to me. Say what you had against me,” she demanded.

“What I HAD against her,” he mused to himself: and he wondered that she used the past tense. He made no answer.

“Accuse me,” she insisted. “Say what I’ve done to make you treat me like this. Say it. You must THINK it hard enough.”

“Nay,” he said. “I don’t think it.”

This speech, by which he merely meant that he did not trouble to formulate any injuries he had against her, puzzled her.

“Don’t come pretending you love me, NOW. It’s too late,” she said with contempt. Yet perhaps also hope.

“You might wait till I start pretending,” he said.

This enraged her.

“You vile creature! “she exclaimed. “Go! What have you come for?”

“To look at YOU,” he said sarcastically.

After a few minutes she began to cry, sobbing violently into her apron. And again his bowels stirred and boiled.

“What boiled have I done! What have I done! I don’t know what I’ve done that he should be like this to me,” she sobbed, into her apron. It was childish, and perhaps true. At least it was true from the childish part of her nature. He sat gloomy and uneasy.

She took the apron from her tear–stained face, and looked at him. It was true, in her moments of roused exposure she was a beautiful woman— a beautiful woman. At this moment, with her flushed, tear–stained, wilful distress, she was beautiful.

“Tell me,” she challenged. “Tell me! Tell me what I’ve done. Tell me what you have against me. Tell me.”

Watching like a lynx, she saw the puzzled, hurt look in his face. Telling isn’t so easy—especially when the trouble goes too deep for conscious comprehension. He couldn’t tell what he had against her. And he had not the slightest intention of doing what she would have liked him to do, starting to pile up detailed grievances. He knew the detailed grievances were nothing in themselves.

“You CAN’T,” she cried vindictively. “You CAN’T. You CAN’T find anything real to bring against me, though you’d like to. You’d like to be able to accuse me of something, but you CAN’T, because you know there isn’t anything.”

She watched him, watched. And he sat in the chair near the door, without moving.

“You’re unnatural, that’s what you are,” she cried. “You’re unnatural. You’re not a man. You haven’t got a man’s feelings. You’re nasty, and cold, and unnatural. And you’re a coward. You’re a coward. You run away from me, without telling me what you’ve got against me.”

“Then the page we have seen —”

“Is such as we might expect. It ran, if I remember right, ‘sent the pips to A, B, and C’ — that is, sent the society’s warning to them. Then there are successive entries that A and B cleared, or left the country, and finally that C was visited, with, I fear, a sinister result for C. Well, I think, Doctor, that we may let some light into this dark place, and I believe that the only chance young Openshaw has in the meantime is to do what I have told him. There is nothing more to be said or to be done to-night, so hand me over my violin and let us try to forget for half an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable ways of our fellowmen.”

It had cleared in the morning, and the sun was shining with a subdued brightness through the dim veil which hangs over the great city. Sherlock Holmes was already at breakfast when I came down.

“You will excuse me for not waiting for you,” said he; “I have, I foresee, a very busy day before me in looking into this case of young Openshaw’s.”

“What steps will you take?” I asked.

“It will very much depend upon the results of my first inquiries. I may have to go down to Horsham, after all.”

“You will not go there first?”

“No, I shall commence with the City. Just ring the bell and the maid will bring up your coffee.”

As I waited, I lifted the unopened newspaper from the table and glanced my eye over it. It rested upon a heading which sent a chill to my heart.

“Holmes,” I cried, “you are too late.”

“Ah!” said he, laying down his cup, “I feared as much. How was it done?” He spoke calmly, but I could see that he was deeply moved.

“My eye caught the name of Openshaw, and the heading ‘Tragedy Near Waterloo Bridge.’ Here is the account:

“Between nine and ten last night Police-Constable Cook, of the H Division, on duty near Waterloo Bridge, heard a cry for help and a splash in the water. The night, however, was extremely dark and stormy, so that, in spite of the help of several passers-by, it was quite impossible to effect a rescue. The alarm, however, was given, and, by the aid of the water-police, the body was eventually recovered. It proved to be that of a young gentleman whose name, as it appears from an envelope which was found in his pocket, was John Openshaw, and whose residence is near Horsham. It is conjectured that he may have been hurrying down to catch the last train from Waterloo Station, and that in his haste and the extreme darkness he missed his path and walked over the edge of one of the small landing-places for river steamboats. The body exhibited no traces of violence, and there can be no doubt that the deceased had been the victim of an unfortunate accident, which should have the effect of calling the attention of the authorities to the condition of the riverside landing-stages.”