with----"

He stopped and turned to the fireplace and rested his elbow on the mantel.
He had turned his back on Maxine, and volumes could not have said more
than what was expressed by that abrupt stoppage of speech and turning
away.

The girl scarcely breathed till the man turned from the mantelpiece and
faced her again. There was no trace of emotion on his face, but the trace
of a struggle with it. Maxine's eyes were filled with tears.

"I am sorry," said he, "that I should have dragged this subject before you
at all. Why should I torment your heart as well as my own?"

She did not reply for a moment. She was tracing the vague pattern of the
carpet with her eyes, her chin resting on her hand, and the light from
above made a halo of the burnished red-gold hair that was her crowning
charm.

Then she said, speaking slowly, "I am not sorry. Surely if such things
are, they ought to be known. Why should I turn away my face from
suffering? I have never done so in Paris, and I have seen much of the
misery of Paris, for I have gone amongst it as much as a girl can, but
what you tell me is beyond what I have ever heard of, or read of, or
dreamed. Tell me more, give me facts; for, frankly, though I believe you,
I cannot yet fully realize, and with my mind fully believe. I am like
Thomas; I must put my fingers in the wounds."

"Are you brave enough to look at material evidence?" asked Adams.

"Yes; brave enough to face the suffering of others if not my own----"

He left the room and in a few minutes later returned with a parcel. He
took from it the skull he had brought with him through everything to
civilization.

Maxine's eyes dilated when she saw the thing, but she did not turn pale,
and she looked steadfastly at it as Adams turned it in his hands and
showed her by the _foramen magnum_ the hacks in the bone caused by the
knife.

She put out her finger and touched them, then she said, "I believe."

Adams put the skull on the table; curious and small and ferocious and
repellent it looked. One would never have imagined the black face, the
grin, and the rolling eyes of the creature to whom it had once belonged.
One thing only about it touched the heart with sadness--its size.

"It is a child's," said Maxine.

"Yes; the child I told you of--all that remains of it."

He was about to wrap the thing up again when the girl interposed.

"Let it lie there whilst you tell me; it will bring things nearer to me. I
am not af