s."

Her manner was so calm that I hesitated at first, bewildered.
Then, finding that she waited for me to speak, I sat down facing her
and began my story.

I told it through, without suppression or concealment, from the time
when my father started to seek the treasure, down to the cowardly
blow that had taken my friend's life. During the whole narrative she
never took her eyes from my face for more than a moment. Her very
lips were bloodless, but her manner was as quiet as though I were
reading her some story of people who had never lived. Once only she
interrupted me. I was repeating the conversation between her father
and Simon Colliver upon Dead Man's Rock.

"You are quite sure," she asked, "of the words? You are positive he
said, 'Captain, it was your knife'?"

"Certain," I answered sadly.

"You are giving the very words they both used?"

"As well as I can remember; and I have cause for a good memory."

"Go on," she replied simply.

So I unrolled the whole chronicle of our unhappy fates, and even read
to her Lucy Railton's letter which I had brought with me. Then, as I
ceased, for full a minute we sat in absolute silence, reading each
other's gaze.

"Let me see the letter," she said, and held out her hand for it.

I gave it to her. She read it slowly through and handed it back.

"Yes, it is my mother's letter," she said, slowly.

Then again silence fell upon us. I could hear the clock tick slowly
on the mantelpiece, and the beating of my own heart that raced and
outstripped it. That was all; until at length the slow, measured
footfall of the timepiece grew maddening to hear; it seemed a symbol
of the unrelenting doom pursuing us, and I longed to rise and break
it to atoms.

I could stand it no longer.

"Claire, tell me that this will not--cannot alter you--that you are
mine yet, as you were before."

"This is impossible," she said, very gravely and quietly.

"Impossible? Oh, no, no, do not say that! You cannot, you must not
say that!"

"Yes, Jasper," she repeated, and her face was pallid as snow; "it is
impossible."

But as I heard my doom, I arose and fought it with blind despair.

"Claire, you do not know what you are saying. You love me, Claire;
you have told me so, and I love you as my very soul. Surely, then,
you will not say this thing. How were we to know? How could you
have told? Oh, Claire! is it that you do not love me?"

Her eyes were full of infinite compassion