6:00 a.m. —Mist Drifting Through Mist
Lieutenant Valcour was out of the door in no time and racing along the corridor up the stairs to the floor above. Somewhere—somewhere was the entrance to the stairs leading farther up to the attic. Ah!—softly now, quietly, not to disturb or shock. Thank God the treads were firm and didn’t creak. …
There was a window in the attic, at the garden end of its peak, not a large window, but big enough to permit the cold white light of morning to illumine the place grayly.
Mrs. Endicott’s back was toward him, her face toward that window, and the light from it blurred softly about her silhouette of darkness. She had upended the trunk she was standing on, and it had placed her hands within convenient reach of the rafter about which she had fastened one end of a short rope. Its other end was coiled in a running noose about her neck.
Lieutenant Valcour measured the distance between where he stood at the top of the stairs and the trunk. He could never make it. Some board would creak. And yet, if he cried out, or spoke, if he failed in the proper choice of a word—in fact, the least thing that startled her would destroy her almost calm stance of fatalistic poise.
He took a penknife from his pocket and, slitting the laces of his shoes, removed them. Thank God her back was toward him, and the window was there with its square of light cut clearly in muffled grays—its light with which she seemed to be holding some private service of communion—that inevitable farewell with earth indulged in by each