The young man was going to prepare the soil for throwing himself upon her mercy—this woman whom he was now positive knew no such thing as mercy—by telling her about his defalcation; but in the wooden state of his mind, one quivering gleam of intelligence suggested that it was quite unnecessary to tell her anything about his defalcation; that it might give her an added set of pincers for the torture she might choose to inflict. "Yes, I stole them," he affirmed doggedly. "And I am going to bring them back." "Going to?" she asked, again making the fine shade of her meaning clear with the slightest expenditure of sound. "Yes, a little accident happened." "An accident!" The woman’s eyes blazed, her cheeks were aflame, and her whole attitude expressive of menace. "You didn’t lose them?" "I only lost control of them for a few hours through a bit of stupidity," he confessed, and hurried on to explain: "For safe keeping this morning I locked them in John Hampstead’s safe deposit box, and he went off with the key. He’s wandering around the tenderloin of San Francisco now on an errand for a man in the county jail, and they don’t even expect him home before to-morrow morning. We can get them—" Again Rollie felt himself mentally interrupted, although Miss Dounay had not spoken. This time, however, her features did change unmistakably. She had been listening with a cynical expression that somehow suggested the manner of a cat about to pounce; and suddenly this manner had departed. It was succeeded by a look of surprise and then of thoughtful interest, followed by that indefinable something which bade him cease to speak. He paused abruptly with his tongue in air, as it were; yet she neither spoke nor looked at him. Her features were a sort of moving picture of complex and swift-flying mental processes which succeeded one another with astonishing rapidity and ended in a queer expression of glory and triumph, while she stiffened her body and drew a full breath so quickly that the air whistled in her narrowing nostrils. Then, as if becoming suddenly aware of the visitor’s presence, Miss Dounay turned her eyes directly upon him and exclaimed, with a manner quite the most pleasant she had yet displayed: "Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Burbeck. Something you said started such an interesting train of thought." Her cordiality extended to the point of reaching out a hand and laying it reassuringly upon Rollie’s arm, while she asked, and this time with a tone of real consideration: "Will you be kind enough to tell me again, very carefully, and a little more in detail, just why you couldn’t bring the diamonds to-day?"