During the afternoon a ray of hope flashed upon me. Mrs. Sullivan Smith was at the H�tel du Rhin, so Rosa had said; I would call on her. I remembered her strange demeanor to me on the occasion of our first meeting, and afterwards at the reception. It seemed clear to me now that she must have known something. Perhaps she might help me.

I found her in a garish apartment too full of Louis Philippe furniture, robed in a crimson tea-gown, and apparently doing nothing whatever. She had the calm quiescence of a Spanish woman. Yet when she saw me her eyes burned with a sudden dark excitement.

“Carl,” she said, with the most staggering abruptness, “you are dying.”

“How do you know?” I said morosely. “Do I look it?”