Kreutzer nodded slowly, his fingers working, all the time, in Anna's
bag. "Presents are sometimes made on birthdays," he admitted. "Well?"

"Happy in the thought that he had remembered me, I went out for my
drive, leaving the box there on his table, just where I had found it.
When I reached the house again I found a note left for me by your
daughter, saying that she had decided upon going from my house
forever, that someday she hoped I would forgive her--"

"What had she done?" said Kreutzer, in a dry voice, full of misery.

"Ah, that she did not say." Mrs. Vanderlyn paused now, with a fine
sense of the dramatic. "But immediately I looked again for that box
and ring and they--were gone!"

Kreutzer, pale, his forehead damp from perspiration of pure agony, as
truly sweat of pain as any ever beaded on the brow of an excruciated
prisoner upon the rack, looked at her with pleading eyes. "Gone!
Madame, you do not think--"

She smiled a bitter little smile. There was, also, just a touch of
triumph in it, such as small souls show when they are on the point of
proving to another, even though a stranger, that they have been wrong
in trusting someone, believing in some thing. "My dear sir," she said
slowly, not from unwillingness to speak but to give emphasis, "what
else can I think? No one but my son, myself and Anna had been near
that room--"

Kreutzer straightened up as one whose shoulders have been stooped for