husband."

"Well?"

"My second demand is to know where you have hidden Doctor Sherman."

"Doctor Sherman? I have nothing to do with Doctor Sherman!"

"You also have everything to do with Doctor Sherman," she returned
steadily. "He is one of the instruments of your plot. You feared that
he would break down and confess, and so you sent him out of the way.
Where is he?"

Again his face worked spasmodically. "I tell you once more I have
nothing whatever to do with Doctor Sherman! Now I hope that's all. I
am tired of this. I have other matters to consider. Good day."

"No, it is not all. For there is my third demand. And that is the most
important of the three. But perhaps I should not say demand. What I
make you is an offer."

"An offer?" he exclaimed.

She did not reply to him directly. She leaned a little farther across
his desk and looked at him with an even greater intentness.

"I do not need to ask you to pause and think upon all the evil you
have done the town," she said slowly. "For you have thought. You were
thinking at the moment I came in. I can see that you are shaken with
horror at the unforeseen results of your scheme. I have come to you to
take sides with your conscience; to join it in asking you, urging you,
to draw back and set things as nearly right as you can. That is my
demand, my offer, my plea--call it what you will."

He had been gazing at her with wide fixed eyes. When he spoke, his
voice was dry, mechanical.

"Set things right? How?"

"Come forward, confess, and straighten out the situation of your own
accord. Westville is in a terrible condition. If you act at once, you
can at least do something to relieve it."

"By setting things right, as you call it, you of course include the
clearing of your father?"

"The clearing of my father, of course. And let me say to you, Mr.
Blake--and for this moment I am speaking as your friend--that it will
be better for you to clear this whole matter up voluntarily, at once,
than to be exposed later, as you certainly will be. To clear this
matter at once may have the result of simplifying the fight against
the epidemic--it may save many lives. That is what I am thinking of
first of all just now."

"You mean to say, then, that it is either confess or be exposed?"

"There is no use in my beating about the bush with you," she replied
in her same steady tone. "For I know that you know that I am after
you."

He did not speak at once. He sat gazing f