you'll be able to get down to dinner--seven, you know; or would you
rather have a plate of nice hot soup up here? Here, I guess. Well, it's
no trouble at all, and you're right to starve your head; it's what I
always do."

She backed smiling out of the door, which she closed gently.

Mrs. Marteen lay back with closed eyes for a moment, then restlessness
seizing her, she sat bolt upright and firmly held her own pulse. "I'm
certainly ill," she said aloud. "I wonder where Marie is? Of course I
left her at the station, and told her to bring the baggage on. But that
was long ago; what has kept her? But this isn't my home," she argued to
herself. She was too weak to trouble with further questioning.
Instinctively she put out her hand and drew the newspaper toward her.
She raised it idly.

"Murder of Victor Mahr"--the big headlines met her eyes.

She felt a shock as if a blinding flash of lightning had enveloped her;
she remembered.

She sat as if turned to stone, staring at the ominous words. Her nerves
tingled from head to foot; her very life seemed a strained and vibrating
string that might snap with any breath. Slowly, as if the Fates had
decided not as yet to break that attenuated thread, the tingling,
stinging shock passed. She found strength to read the whole article,
almost intelligently, though at times her mind would wander to
inconsequent things, and the beat of her own heart seemed to deaden her
understanding. She remembered now everything, nearly everything, till
she turned from her own door, a desperate, homeless outcast. She