“Slip off that sad-looking dress, Chris!” Had he really uttered those words aloud? Or had it been no more than his heart speaking to his heart? Was one of her fragile shoulders free now of that dress⁠ ⁠… and become white, as everything else was white, at that fatal moment?

“You’re looking at my mirror, Wolf?” Ah! She was speaking to him at last! But why did not the sound of her voice relax the tension? “It’s old, that looking-glass. It belonged to my mother.”

His eyes seemed to be dimmed now by a film of gauzy mist, which, as it floated before him, made everything vague and fluctuating. And then⁠—without a second’s warning⁠—there appeared, at the end of the reflected perspective in that mirror on the chest of drawers, the lamentable countenance of the man on the Waterloo steps!

The pitiful face looked straight into his face, and it was in vain that he struggled to turn away from it.