window. It had
been an effort to her to see and talk with her spiritual adviser,
whose hypocrisy she had vaguely felt.

If only Ramon had come--Ramon, whose wife she would be in so short a
time, and who must now be father as well as husband to her. She
glanced at the little French clock on the mantel. He was late--he had
promised to be there at four. As she parted the heavy curtains, the
telephone upon her father's desk, in the corner, shrilled sharply.
When she took the receiver off the hook, the voice of her lover came
to the girl as clearly, tenderly, as if he, himself, stood beside
her.

"Anita, dear, may I come to you now?"

"Oh, please do, Ramon; I have been waiting for you. Dr. Franklin
called this afternoon, and while he was here with me Mr. Rockamore and
Mr. Mallowe came, but I could not see them. There is something I feel
I must talk over with you."

She hung up the receiver with a little sigh, and for the first time in
days a faint suspicion of a smile lightened her face. As she turned
away, however, her eyes fell upon the great leather chair by the
hearth, and her expression changed as she gave an uncontrollable
shudder. It was in that chair her father had been found on that
fateful morning, about a week ago, clad still in the dinner-clothes of
the previous evening, a faint, introspective smile upon his keen,
inscrutable face; his eyes wide, with a politely inquiring stare, as
if he had looked upon things which until then had been withheld from
his vision. She walked over to the chair, and laid her hand where his
head had rested. Then, all at once, the tension within her seemed to
snap and she flung herself within its capacious, wide-reaching arms,
in a torrent of tears--the first she had shed.

It was thus that Ramon Hamilton found her, on his arrival twenty
minutes later, and without ado, he gathered her up, carried her to the
window-seat, and made her cry out her heart upon his shoulder.

When she was somewhat quieted he said to her gently, "Dearest, why
will you insist upon coming to this room, of all others, at least
just for a little time? The memories here will only add to your
suffering."

"I don't know; I can't explain it. That chair there in which poor
father was found has a peculiar, dreadful fascination for me. I have
heard that murderers invariably return sooner or later to the scene of
their crime. May we not also have the same desire to stay close to the
place whence some one we lov