sensitiveness to enhance the innate hideousness of the
thing that had been done here before their eyes. There was, too, the
fact that the murderer himself had been the man to whom she owed her
life. Yes, for him, Dick realized with poignant sympathy, the happening
that night was terrible indeed: for her, as he guessed now at last,
the torture must be something easily to overwhelm all her strength. His
touch on her grew tender beyond the ordinary tenderness of love, made
gentler by a great underlying compassion for her misery.

Dick drew Mary toward the couch, there let her sink down in a huddled
attitude of despair.

"I never saw a man--killed before!" she said again. There was a note of
half-hysterical, almost childish complaint in her voice. She moved
her head a little, as if to look into the shadows where _it_ lay,
then checked herself violently, and looked up at her husband with the
pathetic simplicity of terror.

"You know, Dick," she repeated dully, "I never saw a man killed before."

Before he could utter the soothing words that rose to his lips, Dick was
interrupted by a slight sound at the door. Instantly, he was all alert
to meet the exigencies of the situation. He stood by the couch, bending
forward a little, as if in a posture of intimate fondness. Then, with
a new thought, he got out his cigarette-case and lighted a cigarette,
after which he resumed his former leaning over the woman as would the
ardent lover. He heard the noise again presently, now so near that
he made sure of being overheard, so at once he spoke with a forced
cheerfulness in his inflection.

"I tell you, Mary," he declared, "everything's going to be all right for
you and me. It was bully of you to come here to me like this."

The girl made no response. She lived still in the nightmare of
murder--that nightmare wherein she had seen Griggs fall dead to the
floor.

Dick, in nervous apprehension as to the issue, sought to bring her to
realization of the new need that had come upon them.

"Talk to me," he commanded, very softly. "They'll be here in a minute.
When they come in, pretend you just came here in order to meet me. Try,
Mary. You must, dearest!" Then, again, his voice rose to loudness, as he
continued. "Why, I've been trying all day to see you. And, now, here we
are together, just as I was beginning to get really discouraged.... I
know my father will eventually----"

He was interrupted by the swift swinging open of the hallwa