She knew even while she awaited the physicians that no spark of life remained and that this was the last time her arms would ever be closed around him in life or death, and as she stood there, for the time upheld by a strength beyond her ordinary physical powers, strange inconsequential little fragments of talk, things he had said to her and she to him, were repeating themselves in her memory, and the exact inflections of his voice were renewing themselves in her ears. Then as two physicians hurried in, closely heeled by two policemen, she surrendered her beloved burden to stronger hands, and, as she moved back with still no trace of tears in her wide eyes, the whole picture darkened and out of muscle and nerve and brain-cell went every vestige of autonomy and consciousness. They caught her as she fell and laid her on a broad upholstered window seat. When her eyes next opened hot pains were scorching her temples and her gaze turned instinctively toward the desk. It was empty of its human burden, and, save for the clerk who had that morning received her in the outer room and a physician, the private office was empty, too. Following the hungry question of her mismated eyes, the doctor gravely nodded his head. "It was instantaneous and painless," he said. Then he added, "We have sent for your brother. He was not in his office, but--" With the startling ferocity of an aroused tigress, Mary strove to rise and make her way to the door, but the physician restrained her. "Not yet," he gently commanded. "You are hardly ready for exertion;" and even before he had finished speaking her knees gave way and she sank back. "My brother!" she whispered, and her eyes burned feverishly. "It will kill me to see him. I shall try to murder him--I--" She was interrupted by the noiseless opening of the door, and Hamilton Burton stood across the threshold of the enemy whose life he had that day broken. He was no longer the Napoleonic Burton. For the instant he was stunned and pale. It was breaking on him that the price of conquest may be excessive. Even before this staggering news had reached him he had seen the headlines of the extras, had read his name coupled with the open and bitter denunciation of public hate. At his shoulder stood young Carl Bristoll, as pallid as a specter. But the brother came swiftly over, dropped to his knees by the girl's side. At sight of her stricken face all the tenderness of family love leaped into a freshly blazing power in his heart until for the time it burned out the remembrance of every other thing. He thrust out his arms and said in a shaken voice, "Little sister, little sister!" But with a cry as though for protection from the touch of something unspeakably foul, she threw both arms across her face and turned, shuddering, from his touch. "Doctor," she besought in a voice of supreme loathing, "in God's name protect me from this murderer!"