"Parker, let me in!" boomed a voice, pounding upon the door. "It's no good for you to lock yourself up like this."

Young Parker had finished writing a letter early this morning. "I'm coming," he shouted, sealing with wax, placing it into the sent box. He strolled across the room and unlocked his study door, and Lord Edwin Wotton entered through, impassively.

"I am so sorry about it all, Parker," said Wotton. "But you must not take it to heart, not to think to much about it."

"You mean about Angela?" asked the lad.

"Yes, of course," answered Wotton, removing his hat, sinking into a sofa. "It is dreadful in one point of view, but it is not your fault. Tell me, you met with her last night, correct?"

"Yes."

"I thought you did. Did you make a scene with her?"

"I was brutal, Lord Edwin -- perfectly brutal. But it is all right now, I am not sorry for anything that has happened. It taught me to know myself better. She'll forgive me, I know she will."

"Ah, I am glad you are taking it like that. I supposed that I would find you plunged in remorse and tearing your golden hair out." Wotton let out a disappointing sigh after saying that sentence, and continued, "Yes, I rather pleased you are taking it with such high spirits."

"I have gone through that last night," said the lad, shaking his head as he smiled. "I am perfectly happy now. I tested your theory, in some sorts, with her last night. I asked her to dine with me here at my home. When she told me it was growing late, I asked her not to leave, like you said. I wanted to know for myself if she kept her promise, if she really did have no limits with her love to me, like I to her. She was reluctant at first, but--"

"She did leave."

"Yes, she didn't love me as I loved her. She was not loyal. After she left, I waited to see if she'll return, but she didn't. I was furious! I wrote the most brutal letter to her, calling off the engagement and telling her how dreadful she was to me, and send my man to hand it to her immediately. I fear I was too harsh to her, too horrible. I will be repented however, just before you entered I finished a letter to her, begging her for her forgiveness. She will pardon my cruelty to her, I know she will. No, she is not as perfect as I made her to be, but I have to come to realise that no one is perfect, even myself for that matter. I do love her and I will marry her, Lord Edwin, my mind is made up."

"Marry her?" curled Wotton, standing up, with some rare expression of amazement in his small eyes. "You can't be serious?"

"I am very serious."

"It does pose an amusing picture, I confess. I would pay money to see such a thing, but--"

"Oh, do be quiet, Lord Edwin," puffed the lad. "I know what you're going to say. Something dreadful about marriage or about women. Don't say it. Don't ever say things of that kind to me again. I asked Angela to marry me, I am not going to break my word to her. She will be my wife and the most perfect one at that."

"Wife? Parker didn't you get my letter? I wrote it this morning and sent the note down."

"Yes, it's right here. I haven't read it yet, I suspect there was something in there I wouldn't like. Your theories cut lives to pieces."

"You know nothing then?"

"Know what, Lord Edwin?" He turned to his acquaintance with a smile, in seeing the seriousness in his stone face, the smile faded. "What's wrong? What's happened?"

Wotton walked calmly away from the sofa, his hands tucked behind his back. "Your Angela is dead."

A cry of pain shrieked from the lad's lips, his eyes glazed, and he collapsed into a chair shunned. "No, it's not possible. You lie!"

"It's all in the morning papers. I wrote down to you to ask you not to see anyone till I came. There will be an inquest, of course, and you must not be mixed up in it. I suppose they don't your name at that theatre? If they don't, it is all right. Seeing that you had bolted in your study when I came, I figured that you already heard of it. I though it better if I told you the news about the events. You should dine with me tonight to get your mind off this business, then maybe the Opera; they are playing Don Giovanni to-night, this evening is a brilliant cast I hear."

He did not answer for a few moments, he was dazed with horror. Finally he stammered in a stifled voice, "How did she die, Lord Edwin? Tell me everything."

Wotton selected a green-covered book off the bookshelf, skimming its contents casually as he spoke in his usual cold-blooded and insensible manner. "I have no doubt it was not an accident, thought it must have been put that way to the public. It seems as she was leaving the theatre with her mother, about half-past three or so in the morning, saying she had forgotten something upstairs. They waited some time for her, but she did not come down again. They ultimately found her lying dead on the floor of her dressing-room. She had swallowed something by mistake, white lead or some wonderful thing they use at theatres. She died instantaneously. It's all very tragic, I suppose, but you should take it too harshly."

"So I have murdered her, Lord Edwin," cried Parker, burying his face in his hands, "murdered her as surely as if I had cut her throat."

"You really shouldn't blame yourself about it all. The girl was an actress, by the by, she merely was a grand figment of pure fantasy, she never really lived and so she has never really died either. Besides any woman who goes off to kill herself is not already unbalanced. Where do you keep your sherry?"

He replaced the book upon his shelf, and continued to speak in the same inattentive manner as he traveled to the wine cabinet across the room. "You should look at this as an enchanting episode in the wonderful spectacle of life. In France, you would be congratulated, if not envied, for such a successful romantic tragedy before you. The French are much more graceful about these things than the English."

He removed a bottle from the cabinet with a slight smile at his words.

"Yet let us analyse what has truly happened here: Someone has killed herself for love of you. I wish I ever had such an experience. The ones who have adored me -- there have been some -- have always insisted on living on long after I had ceased to care for them, or they to care for me. They have become stout and tedious, and when I meet them, they go in at once for reminiscences. That awful memory of woman! They remember everything except the important. -- Here drink this, it will make you fell better. -- I forget what killed my love for her. I think it was her proposing to sacrifice the whole world for me. That's always a dreadful moment, fills one with the terror of eternity. I found myself seated at dinner next the lady in question, and she insisted on going the whole thing over again. I had buried my romance in a bed of asphodel, but she insisted on it being dragged out again and assured me that I had spoiled her life. Yet I am bound to state that she ate an enormous dinner, so I did not feel any anxiety. Women never do know when the curtain has fallen."

He sipped his glass and slipped a smile at the aroma. "But you have not answered me if you will dine with me to-night?"

"I'm not feeling up to it," sulked the lad, trying to hide the burying tears in his eyes. His emotions were in a whirlwind of madness and confusion and Wotton's words were not helping it.

"Well, perhaps not now. You just need a bit of crying and it will all flush out of you in a few hours, quite right. I'll be dining Marcini's at seven, I'll wait for you there." He finished his glass, and collected his hat and stick, as he headed for the exit of the study. "Oh, if you are not up to that, meet me at the Opera then. I will be sharing Box 3 with my sister. She really must meet her, Parker. She seems to be the only female I have any annotating respect for. Don't think too hard about it. I'll see you there, don't disappoint me."

It was half-past seven. Lord Edwin was dining alone upon one of the outside tables of Marcini's, sipping his Chardonnay lazily, as he watched the mice stroll pass, watching them, studying them. Suddenly a young mouse dashed through the crowd across the street, shouting and hollering his grunts. His clothes looked as if they were flung on him by a tempest, his gold hair was messy, and his frantic blue eyes had a bit of madness in them. He seemed to be twenty, however the sagging eyes seem to make him look older.

He had been watched, like every other, and studied and concluded in a controlled area of consciousness under a dispassionate, methodical interest of Lord Edwin Wotton's frozen stares and hidden smiles.

He cursed and shouted at the passing mice, pushing and shoving them as he tore his way through the bodies. His hands quivered and his eye twitched as he grunted out his path. He flung out a gun from his pocket and blasted a cartilage in the air with scream! The crowd scattered, shrieking in a panic.

Another cartilage was fired in the air with a shout!

And another!

And another!

A constable's whistle was blared above the screams. The madman cursed at them, aiming the revolver at the officers, and shouted them to keep back. He laughed hysterically, his eye twitching, as he aimed the gun quickly to his temple, and with one last scream, the lad cried a name of a dead woman, and all was finished of him...

As the constables pushed away spectators, trying to calm down the crowd. A stone-faced mouse, across the street, seated at a table in Marcini's, sipping his Chardonnay quietly as observed the most entertaining adversity before him. His psychoanalysis of this character, this young naïvely emotional lad, was complete. He was not his first study, nor will he be the last. He had been watched, like every other, and studied and concluded in a controlled area of consciousness under a dispassionate, methodical interest of Lord Edwin Wotton's frozen stare and hidden smiles.

THE END