“Why do you act this way, Carty?” she said wearily. “Why do you make matters worse?” He looked at her in perplexity. “Don’t you believe me,” he said, “when I tell you that I don’t know what you mean?” “How can I believe you,” she answered, “when I have the proof that you do?” “The proof?” he echoed. “What proof?” His blank surprise shook her confidence for an instant. “You know well enough,” she said. “You forgot to put back the violet.” “The violet?” he repeated. “In Heaven’s name what are you talking about?” She studied his face. Again her conviction was shaken, and she trembled in spite of herself. But she saw no other way. “I can’t believe you,” she said sadly. He made no answer, but a change came over his face. His patience had gone. His anger was kindling. It began to frighten her. She summoned her will and made an effort to hold her ground. “Will you swear,” she said--“will you swear you didn’t open the locket?” Still he made no reply. “Nor shut it?” she went on. She was pleading now. “Sally,” he said in a strange voice, “I neither opened nor closed nor saw a locket. What has a locket to do with this?” She looked at him blankly in terror, for suddenly she knew that he was speaking the truth. “Then what has happened?” she murmured. “You must tell that,” he said. “I only know this,” she began: “I wore a locket the day of the accident. There was a pressed flower in it.” The color began to rise in her cheeks again. “When I came to, the flower was gone, so I knew the locket had been opened.” For a moment he was speechless. “And you treat me as you have,” he cried, “on the suspicion of my opening this locket!” She made no answer. He laughed harshly. “You think of me as a man who would open your locket!” Still she made no answer. His voice dropped to a whisper. “O Sally! Sally!” he exclaimed. “There are things on my side!” she said protestingly at last. “You can’t understand because you don’t know what was in the locket.” “I could guess,” he said. She went on, ignoring his remark: “And you have no explanation as to how it was opened and closed again. What am I to think?” “Sally,” he said more gently, “isn’t it possible that the locket was shaken open when you fell and that the people who put you to bed closed it?” “My maid put me to bed,” said the girl; “she says the locket when she saw it was closed.” “Then perhaps the flower was lost before, and you had forgotten,” he suggested. She shook her head. “No,” she answered, “the maid found the flower when she undressed me. She gave it to me when I came to. That is how my attention was called to it.” “Then strange as it seems,” he said calmly, “the thing must have jarred open, the flower dropped out, and the locket shut again of itself. There is no other way.” “Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps!” he repeated. “What other way could there have been?” “There couldn’t have been any other way,” she assented, “if you say you didn’t see it when you loosened my habit.”