.

"I saw you--at the station," she said, suddenly. "You--you were in a
hurry to go." I did not say anything, and after a pause she drew a long
breath. "Men are queer, aren't they?" she said, and fell to whistling
again.

After a while she sat up as if she had made a resolution. "I am going
to confess something," she announced suddenly. "You said, you know, that
you had ordered all this for something you--you wanted to say to me.
But the fact is, I fixed it all--came here, I mean, because--I knew you
would come, and I had something to tell you. It was such a miserable
thing I--needed the accessories to help me out."

"I don't want to hear anything that distresses you to tell," I assured
her. "I didn't come here to force your confidence, Alison. I came
because I couldn't help it." She did not object to my use of her name.

"Have you found--your papers?" she asked, looking directly at me for
almost the first time.

"Not yet. We hope to."

"The--police have not interfered with you?"

"They haven't had any opportunity," I equivocated. "You needn't distress
yourself about that, anyhow."

"But I do. I wonder why you still believe in me? Nobody else does."

"I wonder," I repeated, "why I do!"

"If you produce Harry Sullivan," she was saying, partly to herself, "and
if you could connect him with Mr. Bronson, and get a full account of why
he was on the train, and all that, it--it would help, wouldn't it?"

I acknowledged that it would. Now that the whole truth was almost in
my possession, I was stricken with the old cowardice. I did not want to
know what she might tell me. The yellow line on the horizon, where the
moon was coming up, was a broken bit of golden chain: my heel in the
sand was again pressed on a woman's yielding fingers: I pulled myself
together with a jerk.

"In order that what you might tell me may help me, if it will," I said
constrainedly, "it would be necessary, perhaps, that you tell it to the
police. Since they have found the end of the necklace--"

"The end of the necklace!" she repeated slowly. "What about the end of
the necklace?"

I stared at her. "Don't you remember"--I leaned forward--"the end of the
cameo necklace, the part that was broken off, and was found in the black
sealskin bag, stained with--with blood?"

"Blood," she said dully. "You mean that you found the broken end? And
then--you had my gold pocket-book, and you saw the necklace in it, and
you--must have thought--"

"I