I know not what I might have answered; but at that instant three raps sounded distinctly upon the window-shutter. I leaped to my feet. Then Charles had come! An instant she stood as if stricken to a statue in mid-rage. And then she cried out, and there was a furious triumph in her voice--a kind of joy that matched itself to, and blended with, the fierce and reckless beauty of her shaken jewels, possessed her. “Charles,” she cried, “come in! Come in!” Slowly the window opened and a man entered. He drew back in amaze at the sight of me, and turned to her with an air that was all one question. “I thought you would never come,” she said. He was a big blond man, and as he turned from the one to the other of us, with his helpless, inquiring face, and eyes that blinked from the outer darkness, he looked oddly like a sleepy schoolboy who has been awakened from an afternoon nap by the teacher's ruler. “Katherine,” he finally stammered, “what is this? Who is this man?” He passed his hand across his forehead as one may do who doubts whether or not he dreams; and walked towards the table. “Charles,” she said, “I have shot the old man.” I have seen a beef stricken on the head with a mallet look at its executioner with big eyes for an instant before the quivering in its limbs set in and it sank to the ground. So this Charles looked with wide, stupid eyes, and shivered, and dropped the great bulk of him into a chair. His head sank upon his hand. But finally he looked up, and spoke in a confused voice, as if through a mist. “Good God, Katherine, what do you mean?” “I mean,” she said, framing the words slowly, as one speaks a lesson to a child, “I mean that I have killed the old man.” And moving swiftly across the room she flung back the heavy red curtain at the end of it; and I saw the answer to my many questionings.