ow--it was you!"
The words came with a rush of desperation.

"Then, you have met me before?" Mary said, quietly.

"No, no!" The girl's voice rose shrill.

Aggie spoke her mind with commendable frankness.

"She's lying."

And, once again, Garson agreed. His yes was spoken in a tone of complete
certainty. That Mary, too, was of their opinion was shown in her next
words.

"So, you have met me before? Where?"

The girl unwittingly made confession in her halting words.

"I--I can't tell you." There was despair in her voice.

"You must." Mary spoke with severity. She felt that this mystery held in
it something sinister to herself. "You must," she repeated imperiously.

The girl only crouched lower.

"I can't!" she cried again. She was panting as if in exhaustion.

"Why can't you?" Mary insisted. She had no sympathy now for the girl's
distress, merely a great suspicious curiosity.

"Because--because----" The girl could not go on.

Mary's usual shrewdness came to her aid, and she put her next question
in a different direction.

"What were you sent up for?" she asked briskly. "Tell me."

It was Garson who broke the silence that followed.

"Come on, now!" he ordered. There was a savage note in his voice under
which the girl visibly winced. Mary made a gesture toward him that he
should not interfere. Nevertheless, the man's command had in it a
threat which the girl could not resist and she answered, though with
a reluctance that made the words seem dragged from her by some outside
force--as indeed they were.

"For stealing."

"Stealing what?" Mary said.

"Goods."

"Where from?"

A reply came in a breath so low that it was barely audible.

"The Emporium."

In a flash of intuition, the whole truth was revealed to the woman who
stood looking down at the cowering creature before her.

"The Emporium!" she repeated. There was a tragedy in the single word.
Her voice grew cold with hate, the hate born of innocence long tortured.
"Then you are the one who----"

The accusation was cut short by the girl's shriek.

"I am not! I am not, I tell you."

For a moment, Mary lost her poise. Her voice rose in a flare of rage.

"You are! You are!"

The craven spirit of the girl could struggle no more. She could only
sit in a huddled, shaking heap of dread. The woman before her had
been disciplined by sorrow to sternest self-control. Though racked by
emotions most intolerable, Mary soon mastered their expression