Surely
mere physical fatigue could not produce a world so black, an outlook so
dismal, a cowardice that struck with such sudden hopelessness at the
very roots of life? For, normally, he was cheerful and strong, full
of the tides of healthy living; and this appalling lassitude swept
the very basis of his personality into Nothingness and the desire for
death. It was like the development of a Secondary Personality. He had
read, of course, how certain persons who suffered shocks developed
thereafter entirely different characteristics, memory, tastes, and
so forth. It had all rather frightened him. Though scientific men
vouched for it, it was hardly to be believed. Yet here was a similar
thing taking place in his own consciousness. He was, beyond question,
experiencing all the mental variations of--_some one else_! It was
un-moral. It was awful. It was--well, after all, at the same time, it
was uncommonly interesting. And this interest he began to feel was the first sign of his returning
normal Self. For to feel interest is to live, and to love life. He sprang into the middle of the room--then switched on the electric
light. And the first thing that struck his eye was--the big cupboard. "Hallo! There's that--beastly cupboard!" he exclaimed to himself,
involuntarily, yet aloud. It held all the clothes, the swinging
skirts and coats and summer blouses of the dead woman. For he knew
now--somehow or other--that she _was_ dead....

At that moment, through the open windows, rushed the sound of falling
water, bringing with it a vivid realisation of the desolate, snow-swept
heights. He saw her--positively _saw_ her!--lying where she had fallen,
the frost upon her cheeks, the snow-dust eddying about her hair and
eyes, her broken limbs pushing against the lumps of ice. For a moment
the sense of spiritual lassitude--of the emptiness of life--vanished
before this picture of broken effort--of a small human force battling
pluckily, yet in vain, against the impersonal and pitiless Potencies of
Inanimate Nature--and he found himself again, his normal self. Then,
instantly, returned again that terrible sense of cold, nothingness,
emptiness....

And he found himself standing opposite the big cupboard where her
clothes were. He wanted to see those clothes--things she had used and
worn. Quite close he stood, almost touching it. The next second he had
touched it. His knuckles struck upon the wood. Why he knocked is hard to say. It was an instinctive movement probably. Something in his deepest self dictated it--ordered it. He knocked at
the door. And the dull sound upon the wood into the stillness of that
room brought--horror. Why it should have done so he found it as hard
to explain to himself as why he should have felt impelled to knock. The fact remains that when he heard the faint reverberation inside the
cupboard, it brought with it so vivid a realisation of the woman's
presence that he stood there shivering upon the floor with a dreadful
sense of anticipation: he almost expected to hear an answering knock
from within--the rustling of the hanging skirts perhaps--or, worse
still, to see the locked door slowly open towards him. And from that moment, he declares that in some way or other he must
have partially lost control of himself, or at least of his better
judgment; for he became possessed by such an overmastering desire
to tear open that cupboard door and see the clothes within, that he
tried every key in the room in the vain effort to unlock it, and then,
finally, before he quite realised what he was doing--rang the bell! But, having rung the bell for no obvious or intelligent reason at
two o'clock in the morning, he then stood waiting in the middle of
the floor for the servant to come, conscious for the first time that
something outside his ordinary self had pushed him towards the act. It
was almost like an internal voice that directed him ... and thus, when
at last steps came down the passage and he faced the cross and sleepy
chambermaid, amazed at being summoned at such an hour, he found no
difficulty in the matter of what he should say. For the same power that
insisted he should open the cupboard door also impelled him to utter
words over which he apparently had no control. "It's not _you_ I rang for!" he said with decision and impatience, "I
want a man. Wake the porter and send him up to me at once--hurry! I
tell you, hurry----!" And when the girl had gone, frightened at his earnestness, Minturn
realised that the words surprised himself as much as they surprised
her. Until they were out of his mouth he had not known what exactly
he was saying. But now he understood that some force foreign to his
own personality was using his mind and organs. The black depression
that had possessed him a few moments before was also part of it. The
powerful mood of this vanished woman had somehow momentarily taken
possession of him--communicated, possibly, by the atmosphere of things
in the room still belonging to her. But even now, when the porter,
without coat or collar, stood beside him in the room, he did not
understand _why_ he insisted, with a positive fury admitting no denial,
that the key of that cupboard must be found and the door instantly
opened. The scene was a curious one. After some perplexed whispering with
the chambermaid at the end of the passage, the porter managed to find
and produce the key in question. Neither he nor the girl knew clearly
what this excited Englishman was up to, or why he was so passionately
intent upon opening the cupboard at two o'clock in the morning. They
watched him with an air of wondering what was going to happen next. But something of his curious earnestness, even of his late fear,
communicated itself to them, and the sound of the key grating in the
lock made them both jump. They held their breath as the creaking door swung slowly open. All
heard the clatter of that other key as it fell against the wooden
floor--within. The cupboard had been locked _from the inside_. But it
was the scared housemaid, from her position in the corridor, who first
saw--and with a wild scream fell crashing against the bannisters. The porter made no attempt to save her. The schoolmaster and himself
made a simultaneous rush towards the door, now wide open. They, too,
had seen. There were no clothes, skirts or blouses on the pegs, but, all by
itself, from an iron hook in the centre, they saw the body of the
Englishwoman hanging by the neck, the head bent horribly forwards, the
tongue protruding. Jarred by the movement of unlocking, the body swung
slowly round to face them.... Pinned upon the inside of the door was a
hotel envelope with the following words pencilled in straggling writing:

"Tired--unhappy--hopelessly depressed.... I cannot face life any
longer.... All is black. I must put an end to it.... I meant to do it
on the mountains, but was afraid. I slipped back to my room unobserved.