eyes without rising. On the desk beside him,
however, ready at notice to convert him from the liveliness of colour
which in private life he fancied to the sable formality of his art,
stood celluloid cuffs and a made-up tie as black and sober as his
caskets.

"I am an attorney," said Boone curtly. "I came to see if--" He broke off
and, proffering the newspaper clipping, made a fresh beginning: "To see
if I could identify her."

Then the proprietor rose and, not deeming it essential, for that
occasion, to cover the fitful pattern of his shirt, led the way to the
back of the place, nursing a cigar stump between his fingers. The
heightened beating of Boone's temples was as though with small,
insistent knuckles all his imprisoned emotions were rapping against his
skull for liberation, and when the undertaker swung open one of several
doors along a narrow and darkened hallway, he found himself halting like
a frightened child. The motor centres of his nerves mutinied, so that it
seemed a labour of Hercules to force his balking foot across the
threshold, and when he saw that the room was too dark for recognition a
gasp of relief broke from his tight-pressed lips as if in gratitude for
even so momentary a reprieve.

"Stand right there," directed the matter-of-fact voice of his conductor;
"I'll switch on the light."

Boone Wellver was trembling, with a chill dampness on his forehead and
hair. He struggled against the powerful impulse to beg another minute of
unconfirmed fear. Then the light flashed, and Boone started as an
incoherent sound came from him which might have meant anything--the
muscular expulsion of breath deep held and the relaxation of a cramped
throat.

The girl, who lay there, was very slender, and the still features were
delicately chiselled. She had been, as the clipping stated, in a fashion
beautiful, but it was not Anne's beauty.

Perhaps the ivory whiteness and the wan thinness of the crossed hands
were the attributes of death rather than of the living girl. Most of all
he felt, with an awed appreciation, the serene and calm courage written
on the lifeless features. He had tried to reassure himself in advance
that it could not be Anne, because Anne's courage would not seek the
coward's escape of self-destruction. Now he could no longer reconcile
any idea of cowardice with that sweet tranquillity.

"She must of caught her lip in her teeth," the undertaker interrupted
his reflections to inform him. "S