"I have it," exclaimed Dr. Crossett. "Suppose that we, all of us, were to leave the room for a few moments, eh?" He turned from one to another, doing his very best to look smiling and unconcerned. "Maria, while we are gone, might hunt about a little, and if she found this money and put it back, no one would ever say a word. All would be as it was before." "I never took it!" Maria's voice was shrill now and in it there was a note of hopelessness. "Tell them I never took it, Miss Lola! Tell them." "I have never known Maria to be dishonest, father." "Maria," Dr. Barnhelm went to her, distressed, appealing. "That money was borrowed by me to pay for the electrical apparatus that is to repay me for all the work of my whole life. You know, Maria, how, day and night, for months and years, I have gone on, changing, adding, destroying, working. I neglected everything and everybody for it. You know how much it means to me!" For a moment she could not answer, although they all stood there, waiting. At last her voice came slowly through the sobs that shook her from head to foot: "You're killing me, that's what you're doing, killing me! Tearing my heart out of me. There ain't a man, nor a woman, in all the world that I love like I love you! I'd rather be dead a million times than do what you think I've done. You are all the good I've ever known, you folks, but I wish to God I'd never seen you. I wish to God you'd left me where I was." "Mon Dieu!" cried Dr. Crossett. "What is a man to think?" "You all believe I done it," went on Maria, "don't you? You've all said so, all but just you." She faced John squarely, but John dropped his head; he could not meet her eye. "You think so, too," she continued. "You've got to think so, because," she stepped close up to him, "because the awful part of it is that it was just me--or her!" She raised her hand slowly, pointing at Lola. "Lola," John turned to her, a queer, hesitating, doubtful tone in his voice. "Maria is such a good girl, I--I----" "Well?" "There--there is no chance of--of a mistake is there--you--you did not----" "No," replied Lola calmly, "I didn't." "Damn it, Doctor!" John turned to him almost roughly. "Let me pay the eight hundred and fifty, and let's none of us ever think of this again." "You don't think I done it," Maria cried out, "you don't. But you are the only one. Well, Doctor," she turned to Dr. Crossett desperately, "I'm done. I can't say anything more. What are you going to do?" "Unless you restore that money to me at once," replied the Doctor, sternly, "I must telephone for a police officer." "Yes, sir." "And I warn you that, if he comes, he will take you away with him." "Yes, sir, but it ain't that I'm thinking of. It ain't even that the news of me being called a thief has got to go to the man I love. I can't even think of that right now. It's that you believe it. I--I won't try to run away, I'll be in my room there, when you want me."