question before we part for the night, one I perhaps ought to have asked
you before. Are you quite positive that Kitty's visitor was your wife?"

He had reserved this hopeful suggestion--one he himself believed in--for
the last. It would help lift the dead weight of bitter anxiety which was
sure to overwhelm his visitor in the wakeful hours of the night.

Felix moved impatiently, like one combating a physician's cheering
words. "It must have been she, who else could have dropped the
sleeve-link?"

"Several people. Excuse me if I talk along different lines, but I have
had a good deal of experience in tracing out just such things as this,
and I have always found it safest to be sure of my facts before deducing
theories. It is not all clear to me that Kitty's woman dropped the
links. And even if she did, the fact is no proof that the woman is your
wife."

"But the links are mine. There is no question of it--my initials and
arms are cut into them." The impatience was gone and a certain curiosity
was manifesting itself.

"Quite true, and yet you once thought the links were stolen. So let us
presume for the present that they were stolen and that this woman either
bought them, or was given them, or found them."

Felix began pacing the floor, a gleam of hope illumining the dark
corners of his heart. The interview, too, had calmed him--as do all
confessions.

The priest settled back in his seat. He saw that the crisis had passed.
There might be another outburst in the future, but it would not have the
intensity of the one he had just witnessed. He waited until Felix was
opposite his chair and then asked, in a low voice: "Well, may I not be
right, Mr. O'Day?"

Felix paused in his walk and gazed down at the priest. "I don't know,"
he answered slowly. "My head is not clear enough to think it out. Mrs.
Cleary might help unravel it. She saw her and will remember. Shall I
sound her when I go home--not to excite her suspicions, of course, but
so as to find out whether her visitor were large or small--details like
that?"

"No, I will ask her, and in a way not to make her suspect. She will
think I am hunting for one of my own people. It is wiser that she should
not know yet what you have told me. I would rather wait for the time
when this poor creature, whoever she is, needs a sister's tenderness.
She will get it there, for no finer woman lives than Kitty Cleary."

A sigh of intense relief escaped Felix. "And now tell me wh