o longer simply an object upon
which her eyes dwelt without recognition, but the man she loved and was
sending away, and the hand which rested on his shoulder must no longer
lie there idle.

Then with all its complicated features of phenomena, the bewilderment of
the situation burst on her, and she struggled to her feet, reeling under
the assaults of dizziness and weakness and wonderment.

How had they come to be sitting there in that unaccountable fashion
together and alone, while the first brightness of morning stole in at
the French windows and the lamp burned on with its sickly mingling of
day and night and the fresh breeze swept in through a broken and
flapping door?

Where was Eben?

Conscience raised her voice--still weak from the drug--and called
wildly, but there was little sound and no answer. Undefined but strong,
the realization struck in upon her that tragedy in some monstrous shape
had entered the place and left its impress.

She stood, still groping with amazement, and her hands rose with a
fumbling uncertainty until the touch of their fingers fell upon the
bosom from which the drapery had been torn, and instinctively gathered
it again over her breast and throat.

But whatever the riddle might portend it could await construction. One
primary fact proclaimed itself in terms so clear and unmistakable that
all else was lost.

Stuart seemed lifeless. She herself had the feeling of one who had been
tangled in the fringes of death: who had struggled out of the meshes of
a fatal web.

He had saved her, when she was too weak to fight--it all seemed very
long ago.... She loved him.... She must save him now.

She knelt at his side, chafing his wrists and trying his heart with ear
and touch--her eyes wide with almost hopeless forebodings.

At last she rose and pressed her hands tight to her throbbing temples.

"Thank God," she whispered, for a faint flutter of life had rewarded her
investigation. In a bewildered voice she murmured: "I must think. I must
remember! We were all sitting here--we were talking."

Again she called, feebly at first, then with a growing strength, for her
husband, and when no answer came except the echo of her own voice, she
left the room and went gropingly, supporting herself against furniture
and wall, to the telephone--but the telephone, too, was dead. The storm
had done that.

Confused now with a torrent of alarms and a sense of futility, she came
back to the man whose li