I imagined their movements; saw them in my mind's eye leaning over that death-tenanted couch, pointing with accusing finger at those two dark marks, and consulting each other with side-long looks, as they passed from one detail of her appearance to another.

I even imagined them crossing the floor and lifting the two cordial glasses just as I had done, and then slowly setting them down again, with perhaps a lift of the brows or a suggestive shake of the head; and maddened by my own intolerable position, drawn by a power I felt it impossible to resist, I crept to my feet and took my staggering way down the half-dozen steps of the gallery and thence along by the left-hand wall towards the further doorway, and through it to where these men stood weighing the chances in which my life and honour were involved, and those of one other of whom I dared not think and would not have these men think for all that was left me of hope and happiness.
It was dark in the ballroom, and it was only a little less so in the corridor.

All the light was in _that_ room; but I still slid along the wall like a thief, with eyes set and ears agape for any chance word which might reach me.

Suddenly I heard one.

It was this, uttered with a decision which had the strange effect of lifting my head and making a man of me again: "That settles it.