ast chance. If you will return to me the jewels that
my butler took--"

"Good heavens, madam! Do you really take me for a professional burglar?"

"How can I help it?" she said indignantly. "Look at your suit case full
of lanterns and masks--full of _marble_, too!"

Speechless, he stared at the burglar's kit.

"I am sorry--" Her voice had altered again to a tremulous sweetness. "I
can't help feeling sorry for you. You do not seem to be hardened; your
voice and manner are not characteristically criminal. I--I can't see
your face very clearly, but it does not seem to be a brutally inhuman
face--"

An awful desire to laugh seized Kerns; he struggled against it;
hysteria lay that way; and he covered his face with both hands and
pinched himself.

She probably mistook the action for the emotion of shame and despair
born of bitter grief; perhaps of terror of the law. It frightened her a
little, but pity dominated. She could scarcely endure to do what she
must do.

"This is dreadful, dreadful!" she faltered. "If you only would give me
back my jewels--"

Sounds, hastily smothered, escaped him. She believed them to be groans,
and it made her slightly faint.

"I--I've simply got to telephone for the police," she said pityingly. "I
must ask you to sit down there and wait--there is a chair. Sit
there--and please don't move, for I--this has unnerved me--I am not
accustomed to doing cruel things; and if you should move too quickly or
attempt to run away I feel certain that this pistol would explode."

"Are you going to telephone?" he asked.

"Yes, I am."

She backed away, cautiously, pistol menacing him, reached for the
receiver, and waited for Central. She waited a long time before she
realized that the telephone as well as the electric light was out of
commission.

"Did _you_ cut all these wires?" she demanded angrily.

"I? What wires?"

She reached out and pressed the electric button which should have rung a
bell in her maid's bedroom on the top floor. She kept her finger on the
button for ten minutes. It was useless.

"You laid deliberate plans to rob this house," she said, her cheeks pink
with indignation. "I am not a bit sorry for you. I shall _not_ let you
go! I shall sit here until somebody comes to my assistance, if I have to
sit here for weeks and weeks!"

"If you'd let me telephone to my club--" he began.

"Your club! You are very plausible. You didn't offer to call up any club
until you found that t