or
you."

"You will fail," says Portia, hopelessly. "You will only succeed in
hurting him."

"How sure you are of your power," says Dulce, angrily. "Yet I will not
be disheartened. I will save him if I can."

"You are quite determined?"

"Quite."

"You will go now to meet him, _now_ when your anger is hot, and say to
him what will surely grieve or wound him?"

"Let us talk sense," says Dulce, impatiently. "I shall simply warn him
to have nothing more to do with a woman who looks upon him with scorn
and contempt."

As she speaks she enters the closet that is nothing more than a big
wardrobe, and, as she does so, Portia, quick as thought follows her,
and, closing the door behind her, turns the key in the lock.

"You shall stay there until you promise me to tell nothing of this
hour's conversation to Fabian," she says, with determination.

"Then I shall probably stay here forever," replies Dulce from within,
with equal determination.

Portia going over to the fire seats herself by it. Dulce going to the
latticed window inside seats herself by _it_. An hour goes by. The
little clock up over the mantelpiece chimes five. A gun is fired off in
the growing dark outside. There is a sound as of many voices in the hall
far down below. A laugh that belongs to Dicky Browne floats upwards, and
makes itself heard in the curious stillness of the room above where the
jailer sits guarding her prisoner.

Then Portia, rising, goes to the door of the condemned cell, and speaks
as follows:

"Dulce."

There is no answer.

"Dulce; you are unwise not to answer me."

Still no answer; whereupon Portia, going back to the fire, lets another
half hour pass in silence. Then she says, "Dulce!" again, and again
receives no reply.

Time flies!--and now at last the dressing bell rings loud and clear
through the house, warning the inmates that the best time in the day
draws on apace.

"Dulce," says Portia, in despair, rising for the third time. To tell the
truth, she is growing a little frightened at the persistent silence, and
begins to wonder nervously if Dulce could get smothered in the small
room, because of all the clothes that surround her.

"Dulce! _will_ you promise?" she says. And now, to her relief, even
though the words that come are unfavorable, Dulce answers.

"Never. Not if I stayed here till Doomsday," says Miss Blount, in
uncompromising tones, and quite as unconcernedly as if she was sitting
in the room outside