as coming swiftly
toward the library.

Genevieve made a move as if to bolt the door, but I checked her with a
gesture. Of what use would it be to bar the way of her who came so
impulsively? The dreadful truth must be broken to her. It was a task
that no third person might assume; let her hear it wrung from her
father's unwilling lips.

"Papa!" She was approaching quickly. How youthful and self-reliant
her voice sounded! The sweet, girlish contralto jarred painfully upon
at least two of our tense, waiting group. And Belle continued to
advance all unsuspectingly.

"Papa, where are you? Why don't you answer?"

Genevieve ran over to her uncle, and laid one arm across his bowed
shoulders.

"Uncle! Uncle!" She shook him, striving in an agitated way to rouse
him to a sense of realization. "Uncle! Sit up! Don't go all to
pieces, this way! Belle is at the door!"

[Illustration: "Uncle, Uncle! Sit up! Don't go to pieces this way"]

And sure enough, as the bent figure painfully straightened a light rap
sounded upon the panel, and Belle's fresh young voice again called:

"Are you in there, papa? May I come in?"

Genevieve drew suddenly back to a shadowed corner, wringing her hands
with a helpless, despairing gesture. Fluette rose unsteadily to his
feet. Then the door opened, and Belle stood framed in the doorway.

The man's look darted feverishly between the two girls--Genevieve
well-nigh overcome, while the smile on Belle's handsome face quickly
gave way to an expression of bewilderment, and then to a dawning one of
alarm. Next she rushed into the room, and stopped abruptly. Bending a
look of anxious inquiry first upon her cousin and then upon me, she
finally confronted her father.

"Papa," she faltered, her voice quaking with the fear that suddenly
gripped her heart, "what is it? What does this mean?" Then, as she
started blindly toward him, she uttered one piercing, agonizing cry:
"Papa!"

Unconsciously he brushed aside her beseeching arms. He did not answer
her directly; his words were a response to the charge that I had not
yet made.

"Man, you are right," he said huskily, "it is my conscience. It is not
you that accuse me, but the pure eyes of these two innocent girls--the
unspoken reproach of that broken, white-haired woman who sits in
silence up-stairs--those fling the charge into my face--sear it into my
very soul--every minute of the day and night.

"Take me. I am guilty. It w