shed a chair against the wall before she sat down to
wait--for what? Ah, that was the horror of it! Was it robbery? There
was her engagement ring, a few ornaments like her watch, and very
little money! Yet, as she had seen misery, even that might be worth
while. But was this a burglar's method? A ransom? That was too
mediaeval for an American city. If neither, then what?

She had but one enemy in the world, her Jack's best friend, or at
least, he was his best friend until the days of her engagement. But he
was a gentleman, and these were the days when men did not revenge
themselves on women who frankly rejected the attentions they had never
encouraged. It was weak, she knew it, to even remember the words he
had said to her when she had refused to hear the man she was to marry
slandered by his chum--still she wished now that she had told Jack,
all the same.

If she could only have a light! There was gas, but no matches. To sit
in the dark, waiting, she knew not what, was maddening.

Then a new terror came over her. Suppose she should fall asleep from
fatigue and exhaustion, and the effect of the dark?

It seemed days that she sat there.

She knew afterward that it was only five hours and a half, but that
five hours and a half were an eternity--three hundred and thirty
minutes, each one of which dragged her down, like a weight, into the
black abyss of the unknown; three hundred and thirty minutes of
listening to the labored beating of her own heart--it was an age,
after all!

Only once did she lose control of herself. She imagined she heard
voices in the hall--that some one laughed--was there still laughter in
the world? In spite of herself, she rushed to the door, and pounded on
it. This was so useless that she began to cry hysterically. Yet she
knew how foolish that was, and she stumbled back to her chair, sank
into it, and calmed herself. She would not do that again.

What was her mother thinking? Poor mama! What would Jack say, when,
at eleven o'clock, he ran in from his bachelor's dinner--his
last--which he was giving to a few friends? What would her father say?
He had always prophesied some disaster for her excursions into the
slums.

Her imagination could easily picture the mad search that would be
made--but who could find a trace of her?

The blackness, the fear, the dread, were doing their work! She was
numb! She began to feel as if she were suspended in space, as if
everything had dropped away from h