world, unknown to itself.

"Don't?" The woman laughed mirthlessly. Her thin lips parted, but the
light in her eyes was unrelenting. "I tell you it is so. Dick Sorley
has gone to his fate. Straight to his doom from your side. You sent
him to it. I have witnessed the whole enactment of it here--in this
crystal. You, and you alone, have killed him--killed him as surely as
though you had deliberately murdered him! Hark! That is the telephone
bell ringing----"

She paused as the shrill peal of the instrument rang through the room.
There was a prolonged ringing. Then it broke off. Then again and again
it rang, in short, impatient jerks.

"Go to it, girl. Go and listen to the message. You say I am cruel.
Hear what that senseless thing has to tell you. Listen to the voice at
the other end. It is at the hospital. The doctor is there, and he will
speak to you. And in a ward adjacent, your discarded lover
lies--dead."

CHAPTER II

OVER THE TELEPHONE

From the depths of her high-backed chair Mercy Lascelles stared at the
white door beyond which Joan had just vanished. Her gaunt figure was
no longer huddled over the fateful crystal she still clutched in her
two hands. Her brain was busy, and her eyes were hot and feverish.

She was not thinking of the girl. She was not even thinking of the
message traveling over the wire at that moment. That she knew. For her
it had no greater significance than that it was the corroboration
necessary to convince the girl who was receiving it--to convince her
of the truth of that which she had charged her with.

Her mind was far away, back in the dim years of her earlier womanhood.
Back amidst scenes of disaster through which she had long since
passed. All the old pain and suffering was at the surface again. Again
was she torn by the bitterness and injustice that had robbed her of
all that seemed good to her in life. Again through her mental picture
moved the figures of two men and one woman, the characters who went to
make up the cast of her wretched drama. Her feelings were once more
afire with hatred, hatred for one, and, for the others, a profound,
contemptuous bitterness.

But hatred was dominant. The memory of one of those men had always
power to drive her to the verge of madness. He was a handsome,
brown-haired man of powerful physique. A man whose gentle manner and
swift, hot temper she abhorred, and the memory of whose influence upon
her life had still power to grind to