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XXV
After the meal there was a moment in which Emilia and I found ourselves alone at one end of the table. I took immediate advantage of the situation. "I have to speak to you," I told her with an emphasis which, in order not to seem amatory, was in fact truculent. I suspect that I did not know at that moment what I had to say. But I had to speak because I felt within myself that gregarious social instinct which is one of the most profitable and noble markers of the human soul.
 No one was watching us. I took Emilia's hand and, with a feeling rooted in the depth of my heart, I informed her of the commissioner's sinister conjectures. She did not withdraw her hand. She did not reply. Neither shock nor annoyance seemed to disturb her placid grief. I ought to have been pleased, but inexplicably I felt instead defrauded.
Almost immediately, though, I recognized gratefully that I owed the recovery of my good sense to Emilia's apparent coldness. How I had exaggerated my sympathy and anxiety for the girl! What a relief to see myself freed from that unjustifiable madness!
It is painful to admit it, but the mystery of Mary's death was beginning to damage the perfect equilibrium of my nerves. I decided to retire early in order to regather my strength. I said, "Good night," and turned toward the office to fill my pencase with ink, to ready it for the literary endeavors of the following morning. When I entered, Atwell and the commissioner were examining a sheet of paper. They handed it to me. It lacked heading, date and signature. It was Mary's message. Such pain, such unhealthy purpose were confessed in the complicated and flowery features of that writing from which true graphologists would never have turned away. Because the time has already come to sound the occult sciences; to reread and to rewrite the hodge-podge of books composed with the criteria, methods and ink of the darkest Middle Ages; to undertake the Great Adventure, the compassless journey of the astrologer, the alchemist and the magician. The men of all those professions are waking now to the Marvelous Dream. . . But who can deny that it is among the practitioners of homeopathy where one discovers the most forceful champions of the new crusade?
The commissioner looked with his austere eyes at the inspector and somberly declared, "With all the respect that I owe you, I continue to believe that the evidence against Miss Emilia is conclusive. My plans haven't changed: I will arrest her and take her to Salinas. That will settle it unless the case passes into other hands."
Instinctively I tried to look outside. The window was a rectangle, impenetrable and dark as onyx in the white wall. I put my ear to the glass. It seemed that the wind was dropping.
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