to her feet. She forced her agonized features into a semblance of
artificial calm. Suppose he should return to her now, defeated, ruined,
crushed, and open his door on that picture of despair and surrender!

The clock said two-fifty-five. So she had been sitting here ten minutes!
Grasping the arms of her chair and bracing herself, she rose with a
labored effort and went resolutely back to the ticker where, as one
draws aside a veil which may reveal tragedy, she picked up the tape
again. She saw no name this time, and suddenly it occurred to her that
the monstrous thing had passed callously on to other news--as though
there were other news!

She dragged it out of its twisted coils in the basket and read in cold,
unpunctuated capitals, EDWARDES AND EDWARDES FAIL TO MEET OBLIGATIONS.

The girl reeled and leaned limply against the wall, and, as she stood
there overpowered and dizzy, a low incoherent moan came up from her
throat. Then as she mechanically held the tenuous death-warrant in her
pulseless fingers, her eyes fell on an item just finished.

MARKET TAKES TURN BURTON BROKERS BIDDING UP.

A comprehension came to her and her brain reeled in fury and torture.
Now that his end was accomplished, the Great Bear had turned bull. He
would sell back on the rise what he had slaughtered on the fall, and
when tomorrow's reaction came with its roster of deluded misery he would
harvest vast profits on his massacre.

She heard a sound beyond the ground glass as though a hand groped before
its fingers found and closed upon the knob. Then slowly the door swung
inward, and Jefferson Edwardes entered. His overcoat hung over one arm,
and, as Mary saw his face, her hands clutched at her heart, but he did
not seem to see her--or to see anything. With a most careful
deliberation the ruined man closed the door silently behind him. He did
it as though he were entering a sick room where he must guard against
disturbing the patient with the slightest sound. Then he took a step or
two forward and halted to stand gazing straight ahead of him, while with
the sleeve of one arm he brushed at his forehead and moistened his lips
with the tip of his tongue.

Mary wondered for an agonized instant whether the cord of his sanity had
snapped under the day's terrific ordeal, and she stood there still
leaning limp and pallid and wide-eyed against the wall, holding before
her the tape that had told her the story--and not realizing that she
held it. Th