And now the unhappy girl lay there straining her ears for that cry of "Extra!" that she so dreaded, and tormenting herself with thoughts of what she might have said and done yesterday, had she not been so stupefied with terror. At last she heard Stivers opening the door, and presently she was showing in a sandy-haired, hooked-nosed young man, with thick red lips and an appraising eye, that seemed at a glance to put a price upon each article in the room. She took the glittering diamond heart from her neck, and, placing it in the man's hand, asked him to remove the back. She would not listen to his proposal to take it to his shop--it must be done there, even at the risk of scratching the gold. Scratch or dent it, if he must, but open it he should! At last the back came off, and the man remarked: "I think there's something engraved here." But Sybil's hand-clasp covered the inscription. "Wait in the other room," she commanded. She bolted the door, flew to the window, and, catching the light upon the metal, read the word she had worn upon her breast three years--the word Stewart said made the sole value of the gem--read and fell upon her knees, and buried her face in the pillow and sobbed and cried: "I understand you better now, dear heart!" and kissed again and again the four little letters that formed that one significant word, "Wife." An hour later the expected cry arose in the street. Hoarse bawling went up one side and down the other, and Sybil knew the man who had been her idol, dearer, more precious than the whole great world, he whose love had been as the very breath of life to her, was gone away forever! And, lying with the locket pressed against her lips, she breathed: "Wife, you said, dear heart? Then your widow now, and as loyal in the shadow of your death as I was in the sunlight of your life!" * * * * *