Then to the wonder and admiration of all, this extraordinary woman showed her full strength and the inexhaustible power she possessed over her own emotions. With a smile piteous in its triumph over a suffering the depths of which they were just beginning to sound, she held his gaze in hers and quietly said:

“You have driven me to the wall, Carleton. If I answer, nothing remains to us of hope or honor; nothing upon which to stay our souls but a consciousness of truth. Shall we let all go and meet our fate as people should who stand on a desolate shore and see the whole world roll away from before them?”

“What was her name?”

At his look, at this repetition of his question, she straightened up, and addressed herself to Mr. Gryce.

“You were astonished and regarded me curiously when at the sound of that foolish little clock I entered this room. That little clock means everything to me, gentlemen.” Here she surveyed them one after the other with her proud and candid eye. “It is the one witness I have — is it not, Carleton?” she asked, turning quickly upon him. “You have not failed me in this?”

He shook his head.

“A witness to what I am still ready to ignore, if such is your will, Carleton.”

Terror! terror far beyond anything they had seen in him yet, paled his cheek and made his face almost unrecognizable; but he could still speak, and in the murmur he let fall she heard no word of protest.

“May I ask one of you to take down that clock?”

In a few minutes it lay on the table to which she had pointed. Mr. Gryce who had at that moment in his pocket a copy of the inscription pasted on its back, expected her to turn it over and show them the token of Mr. Roberts’ and her united initials.

But it was not this she had in mind. Though she took up the clock, she did not turn it round, only looked at it steadily, her trembling lips and a tear — the first they had seen — testifying to the rush of old memories which this simple little object brought back to her long suffering heart. Then she laid it down again and seemed to hesitate.

“I want to get at the works inside,” she appealed to them with a helpless accent. “Can you tear off the back? That would be the quickest way. But no, I know a quicker,” and lifting the clock again she turned it upside down and shook it.

They heard — what did............