But it is not the puzzle or its solution," he said modestly, "which is most interesting here.

Consider the people.
Mme.

Dauvray, the old, rich, ignorant woman, with her superstitions and her generosity, her desire to converse with Mme.

de Montespan and the great ladies of the past, and her love of a young, fresh face about her; Helene Vauquier, the maid with her six years of confidential service, who finds herself suddenly supplanted and made to tend and dress in dainty frocks the girl who has supplanted her; the young girl herself, that poor child, with her love of fine clothes, the Bohemian who, brought up amidst trickeries and practising them as a profession, looking upon them and upon misery and starvation and despair as the commonplaces of life, keeps a simplicity and a delicacy and a freshness which would have withered in a day had she been brought up otherwise; Harry Wethermill, the courted and successful man of genius.
"Just imagine if you can what his feelings must have been, when in Mme.
Dauvray's bedroom, with the woman he had uselessly murdered lying rigid beneath the sheet, he saw me raise the block of wood from the inlaid floor and take out one by one those jewel cases for which less than twelve hours before he had been ransacking that very room.

But what he must have felt! And to give no sign! Oh, these people are the interesting problems in this story.