Great sobs emanated from his white lips, as his shoulders heaved
in a paroxysm.

Shirley had struck the Achilles tendon--the hardest wretch in the
world had one, as he knew!

"Oh--oh--" he moaned, "the poor little mutter. She has forgiven
so much, suffered so much. You can't do it. You won't do it!"
He fell to his knees, clawing at the criminologist's garments
with his trembling hands, the tears streaming down his face.

"What about those who have seen no compassion from you?" cried
Shirley in a terrible voice. "Your vanity, your self-worship!
Do they not comfort you now? This is only the suffering of
another which you contemplate! Why all these hysterics?"

Warren, groveling on the floor of the reception-room, was a
picture of abject, horrid soul-torture. At last, through the
subtlety of this unconventional sleuth, along methods which were
never dreamed of in the ordinary police category, he had been
broken on the wheel which he had himself so cunningly
constructed!

"And if that mother dies, cursing your memory with her last
breath, cursing the love of the father, of her husband, of the
ancestors, all responsible for your being in the world today,
what will you think, when you watch from the other side of that
great unseen wall?"

"Oh, Shirley! I can't. See--I'll destroy this stuff. I'll keep