We might have been spared the
memory--the awful memory--of this death!"
"You forget, my English friend, that a dead body was necessary for us.
We had to bury somebody. Why not the man Oxbye?"
CHAPTER LIII
THE WIFE'S RETURN
OF course Mrs. Vimpany was quite right. Iris had gone back to her
husband. She arrived, in fact, at the cottage in the evening just
before dark--in the falling day, when some people are more than
commonly sensitive to sights and sounds, and when the eyes are more apt
than at other times to be deceived by strange appearances. Iris walked
into the garden, finding no one there. She opened the door with her own
key and let herself in. The house struck her as strangely empty and
silent. She opened the dining-room door: no one was there. Like all
French dining-rooms, it was used for no other purpose than for eating,
and furnished with little more than the barest necessaries. She closed
the door and opened that of the salon: that also was empty. She called
her husband: there was no answer. She called the name of the cook:
there was no answer. It was fortunate that she did not open the door of
the spare room, for there lay the body of the dead man. She went
upstairs to her husband's room.
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