All at once a moment of clarity came to him with a chill of ice. He stopped, went to the telephone and called up the Racquet Club, saying: "Mr. De Gollyer to the 'phone." Then he looked at his hand and found he was still clutching a forgotten hair brush. With a cry at the grotesqueness of the thing, he flung it from him, watching it go skipping over the polished floor. The voice of De Gollyer called him. "Is that you, Jim?" he said, steadying himself. "Come--come to me at once--quick!" He could have said no more. He dropped the receiver, overturning the stand, and began again his caged pacing of the floor. Ten minutes later De Gollyer nervously slipped into the room. He was a quick, instinctive ferret of a man, one to whose eyes the hidden life of the city held no mysteries; who understood equally the shadows that glide on the street and the masks that pass in luxurious carriages. In one glance he had caught the disorder in the room and the agitation in his friend. He advanced a step, balanced his hat on the desk, perceived the crumpled letter, and, clearing his throat, drew back, frowning and alert, correctly prepared for any situation. Lightbody, without seeming to perceive his arrival, continued his blind traveling, pressing his fists from time to time against his throat to choke back the excess of emotions which, in the last minutes, had dazed his perceptions and left him inertly struggling against a shapeless pain. All at once he stopped, flung out his arms and cried: "She's gone!" De Gollyer did not on the word seize the situation. "Gone! Who's gone?" he said with a nervous, jerky fixing of his head, while his glance immediately sought the vista through the door to assure himself that no third person was present. But Lightbody, unconscious of everything but his own utter grief, was threshing back and forth, repeating mechanically, with increasing _staccato_: "Gone, gone!" "Who? Where?" With a sudden movement, De Gollyer caught his friend by the shoulder and faced him about as a naughty child, exclaiming: "Here, I say, old chap, brace up! Throw back your shoulders--take a long breath!" With a violent wrench, Lightbody twisted himself free, while one hand flung appealingly back, begged for time to master the emotion which burst forth in the cry: "Gone--forever!" "By Jove!" said De Gollyer, suddenly enlightened, and through his mind flashed the thought--"There's been an accident--something fatal. Tough--devilish tough." He cast a furtive glance toward the bedrooms and then an alarmed one toward his friend, standing in the embrasure of the windows, pressing his forehead against the panes.