I could already feel a velvet numbness rising in my brain. Although I knew it was futile, I could not help struggling against it. Katya needed me. When the opiate finally overwhelmed me, I went under in a nauseating turmoil of resistance and terror.

When I emerged again into consciousness, I was alone in the room, bathed in sweat and so weak that it took concentrated effort to lift my head and look towards the window. From the quality of the light I knew it was midafternoon. With trembling effort, I sat up and gingerly slipped my legs over the side of the bed. A wave of giddiness passed off, leaving me with a throbbing headache. I tugged up my nightdress and pulled off the plaster to examine my wound. It was tender and raw, and two ugly black threads merged with the redness where Doctor Gros had stitched it closed, but the wound was quite superficial and there was no bleeding. I redressed it; then I ventured to stand beside the bed. There was dizziness and a swim of pain, but I could stay on my feet. My clothes were hanging on a peg on the far wall, and I got dressed, moving cautiously, leaning against the wall each time a wave of light-headedness overcame me. My clothes were soiled, and the shirt was stiff with blood on the right, but I did not dare return to my boardinghouse for a change lest Doctor Gros discover my absence and make a commotion. Slipping unnoticed out the back door, I made my way to the stable where I found the boy drowsing on a pile of loose hay. He harnessed up the mare for me, and soon I was out of Salies and on the road to Etcheverria.

The shaking of the trap was painful at first, but the stiffness slowly worked itself out, and the cool breeze and lemon sunlight began to refresh me and renew my strength.

I did not dare anticipate what I would find at Etcheverria. Indeed, I had only the vaguest idea of what I would do there; but I felt that Katya needed me, and nothing in the world could have kept me away.

The poplars lining the lane up to the house blocked the breeze, and the sound of the mare’s hooves seemed peculiarly loud in the silence as I passed the decaying wall of the overgrown garden. I descended from the trap and stood for a moment in the graveled courtyard. The front door of the house gaped wide open, and the only sound was the moaning of the wind high in the treetops. There was an undefinable but most palpable ambience of desertion about the place. A cold dread stiffened the hairs on the nape of my neck, and I knew instinctively that I was too late. Too late for… I did not know what.

I passed through into the central hall and called out Katya’s name. No answer. I looked into the salon. No one. The dining room was empty. I went down the short hall to Monsieur Treville’s study and tapped at the door. There was no response. I pushed it open and stepped in. The desk was stacked with books and papers in the toppling disarray I remembered, and the floor was strewn with open boxes and piles of books, as though the old scholar had stepped out and would return at any moment to continue packing for his move to yet another home.

At the foot of the staircase I called up, “Katya?” No answer. “Katya!” Silence. I climbed the stairs quietly and stood in the upper hall where I had never been before. The walls of the stairwell were bright with diffuse sunlight from the open front door below, but the hall was dark and all the doors leading off it were closed. I had no idea which room was hers. I tapped at the nearest door and, when there was no response, I pressed it open and peered in. The shutters were half-closed, and the only light came from the softly billowing curtains which glowed, alive with a blur of sunlight that was blinding in the darkness. I could dimly make out a figure on the bed… a man… fully clothed. “Paul?” I called softly. “Monsieur Treville?” The figure did not stir. I quietly approached the bed.

It was Monsieur Treville lying on his back atop the counterpane, and I noticed that his boots were still on. “Monsieur Treville? Sir?” The breeze pressed the glowing curtains out, and briefly the face was brilliantly visible before it receded back into the gloom.

My glance winced away in shock and disgust. There was a small black hole in the right temple, and the upper third of the left side of his face was blown away. A wave of nausea rose in me, and I felt my knees go slack. I caught myself on the bedstead and held on until the faintness passed; then I stumbled out of the room and stood in the hall, giddy. Through the vertiginous stupor of shock, I clung to one thought: I must find Katya! The two remaining doors off the hall were closed. I forced myself to approach the nearest and put my hand on the knob. It took all my concentrated will to turn the knob, dreading what I might find within.

“That’s Katya’s room, Montjean.”

I gasped and spun around. Standing at the head of the stairs in the heavy shadow was Paul’s figure, difficult to distinguish against the bright walls of the stairwell.

“You mustn’t disturb her.” The voice was peculiar… harsh… strained. “She’s been through a terrible experience. Let her rest.”

I peered at him through the dark of the hall. He had a strangely rumpled appearance; his clothes hung slackly on him; his hair looked oddly chopped and disarranged. And the target pistol he held in his right hand dangled at his side.

But the face, barely discernible through the gloom… The soft sensitive eyes…

A wave of horror chilled my skin. “Katya?” I breathed.

“She’s resting, I told you. I won’t have her disturbed.” She constricted her throat to force the note of her voice deeper. The effect was a ghastly rasp that made me shudder.

I had to think! I had to control my emotions. Be calm and think. “May I… may I look in on her… Paul? Just for a second?”

She stared at me for a long moment. “Very well. But don’t wake her. She needs her rest. She is weary… so weary….” The tone of plaintive compassion contrasted eerily with the macabre rasp of her voice.

My heart pounding, my mind awash with fear, I pushed the door open partway. This room, too, was heavy with shadow, deepened by the contrasting glare of sunlight through the gently billowing curtains. I closed the door softly behind me and crossed to the bed. Paul lay on his back, his arms at his sides, his legs straight and stiff. He was dead. She had covered him with one of her white dresses, its collar tucked under his chin, its arms carefully placed over his arms, giving the impression that he was wearing the garment. And his face, in repose so like hers, lent grotesque realism to the illusion.

“Oh, my God,” I breathed.

I folded the dress down and discovered a blot of dark blood over his shirtfront, in the center of which was a small black hole. He had been shot through the heart. But there was no blood on the counterpane upon which he lay. He had been shot somewhere else and carried—dragged, more likely—up to her bedroom. I shuddered to imagine the terrible effort it must have cost her to drag and tug his limp body up those broad stairs and into her room. And heaving it up onto the bed…

I carefully replaced the dress over him, and I stepped back into the hall, closing the door behind me.

She had not moved from the head of the stairs, where she was a silhouette of shadow against the glowing walls of the stairwell. “Is she sleeping?” she asked.

I drew a long breath. “Yes. She’s… resting.”

“Good,” she said in her forced gravelly voice. There was a moment of silence.

“I… Paul? May I have a few words with you?” I asked hesitantly.

She raised one eyebrow in Paul’s superior way. “If you must, old boy.” She turned and preceded me down the stairs. As I walked behind her I saw that she had crudely chopped her hair short and had tried to plaster it down with water.

A Drowned Virgin?

When, months later, I could review these events with a clearer mind, I realized that I had felt no sense of personal danger. I was afraid, to be sure, but not for myself. I recognized that Katya was quite mad. I assumed that she had killed her brother and perhaps her father with the target pistol she carried nonchalantly in her hand. There was no reason to believe she might not kill me. And yet, there was no place in the tangle of my emotions for fear. Perhaps the thought of being dead, of being out of it all, had a certain attraction.