relieving the maddening tension.

"It is the pool; the pool," she finally murmured. "Its waters have beaten
out your life." But he calmly shook his head.

"It is not in water to do that," he murmured. "Give me a moment. I've a
question to ask. I think a drop of liquor--"

Harper had flask in hand almost before the word had left the other's
mouth. The draft revived Hazen; he looked up at Georgian. "I believe you,
so do these men believe you. But you were not alone in this plot. Where
is Anitra? Where is the deaf and solitary one you dragged from the
streets of New York to bolster up your plot? Tell us and tell us quickly.
Where is Anitra?"

"Anitra? Do you ask that?" cried Harper, roused to speak for the first
time by his boundless amazement and indignation. "You have described the
body in the pool--a description which fits either sister, and yet you
would make this woman tell us what you have seen with your own eyes."

He might as well not have spoken. Neither he nor she seemed to hear him.
Certainly neither heeded.

"Anitra?" she repeated softly and with a strange intonation. "I am
Anitra. I am both Georgian and Anitra. There have never been two of us
since I came into this house."

CHAPTER XXVIII

FIFTEEN MINUTES

"There have never been but one of us since I came into this house."

Monstrous assertion! or so it seemed to Ransom as the whirl of his
thoughts settled and reason resumed its sway. Only one! But he had
himself seen two; so had Mrs. Deo and the maids; he could even relate the
differences between them on that first night. Yet had he ever seen them
together, or even the shadow of one at the same moment he saw the person
of the other? No, and with such an actress as she had shown herself to be
these last two days, such changes of appearance might be possible, though
why she should engage in such a deep, almost incredible plot was a
mystery to make the hair rise,--she, the tender, exquisite, the beloved
woman of his dreams.

She saw the maddening nature of his confusion and, springing to him, fell
on her knees with the imploring cry:

"Patience! Do not try to think--I will tell you. It can all be said in a
word. I was bound to this brother of mine, to do his bidding, to follow
his fortunes through life, and up to death, by promises and oaths to
which those uttered by me at the marriage altar were but toys and empty
air. Anitra, or the dream sister my misery took from the dead, was not
so b