She struggled to her feet and stood with her back to the wall, her breast heaving and her pupils blazing out of the death-like pallor of a drawn face. Her hands lay flat against the wainscoting with spread fingers that convulsively twitched as if she were seeking to press back the solid partition and escape that way. "Listen to me, or you will break my heart," pleaded Hamilton tensely. "I thought it was a curable infatuation. If I had known you cared so much--" "Break your heart! I wish to God I could, but you have no heart," she screamed, and she swayed to the side until, had the doctor not supported her shoulder, she would have fallen, but her words poured on in a fierce torrent. "You have broken my heart, and you have killed him. You knew how much I cared. You are a monster, but not an idiot. You have sacrificed a country to your one unspeakable Moloch of a god--I hope you--and your god--are satisfied." For an instant some echo of the old dominance flickered into the man's face. "Edwardes fought and defied me," he said. "I punished--" But his sister interrupted with a wrath which nothing could stem: "You have overreached yourself--you, too, will go down in this carnage. I shall pray God that you do--my God who is over your god; my God and his." Her voice became calmer, but her phrases were broken by gasping pauses. She spoke as though her God had commanded her to read this bitter indictment against her brother. "Because he shrined his honor above your insatiable greed you undertook to doom him. You have written a page ... into history ... a page full of horror ... you have made criminals of honest men ... and suicides of brave ones. Now in the trail of your incendiary malice you cast his life--" her voice fell in a tortured sob--"the life ... he so bravely fought for there in the hills ... and after it you toss my heart." The financier moved a step forward and his lips opened, but the doctor laid a hand on his arm. "You must leave her, sir," he said quietly, but finally. "She is in no condition to stand more of this." "How can I leave her like this?" remonstrated Hamilton and once more the physician raised his hand. "In such a case the doctor must be obeyed--unless--" his own voice hardened--"you are anxious to add even worse results to today's work." Hamilton Burton turned. "Do what you can," he said. "I will send Paul." So he left the place, passing between the employees of the bankrupt firm of Edwardes and Edwardes in the anterooms. At his elbow followed young Bristoll, but when they had reached the ground floor the secretary halted his chief with an impetuous touch on the arm. "It's no use, sir--we separate here," he said passionately. "I must give you my resignation, at once."