y that Miss Bamberger had been murdered, his thoughts
did not dwell on the broken engagement.

'Why don't you try to find out the truth?' Margaret asked rather
anxiously. 'You know so many people everywhere--you have so much
experience.'

'I never had much taste for detective work,' answered the literary
man, 'and besides, this is none of my business. But Bamberger and Van
Torp are probably both of them aware by this time that I found the
girl and carried her to the manager's room, and when they are ready
to ask me what I know, or what I remember, the detective they
are employing will suddenly appear to me in the shape of a new
acquaintance in some out-of-the-way place, who will go to work
scientifically to make me talk to him. He will very likely have a
little theory of his own, to the effect that since it was I who
brought Miss Bamberger to Schreiermeyer's room, it was probably I who
killed her, for some mysterious reason!'

'Shall you tell him about the drop of blood on your hand?'

'Without the slightest hesitation. But not until I am asked, and I
shall be very glad if you will not speak of it.'

'I won't,' Margaret said; 'but I wonder why you have told me if you
mean to keep it a secret!'

The veteran man of letters turned his sad grey eyes to hers, while his
lips smiled.

'The world is not all bad,' he said. 'All men are not liars, and all
women do not betray confidence.'

'It's very good to hear a man like you say that,' Margaret answered.
'It means something.'

'Yes,' assented Griggs thoughtfully. 'It means a great deal to me to
be sure of it, now that most of my life is lived.'

'Were you unhappy when you were young?'

She asked the question as a woman sometimes does who feels herself
strongly drawn to a man much older than she. Griggs did not answer at
once, and when he spoke his voice was unusually grave, and his eyes
looked far away.

'A great misfortune happened to me,' he said. 'A great misfortune,' he
repeated slowly, after a pause, and his tone and look told Margaret
how great that calamity had been better than a score of big words.

'Forgive me,' Margaret said softly; 'I should have known.'

'No,' Griggs answered after a moment. 'You could not have known. It
happened very long ago, perhaps ten years before you were born.'

Again he turned his sad grey eyes to hers, but no smile lingered now
about the rather stern mouth. The two looked at each other quietly
for five or six seconds, an