A sleepy elevator girl took me up to Roberta's apartment and I found that the door opened at my touch. In another moment I was standing in the silent hall looking down a long passage that led to Penelope's bedroom. The bedroom door was ajar and a dim light from the chamber illumined the way before me. Thus far I had acted swiftly, almost mechanically, knowing that I had only one thing to do, and I had been aware of no particular emotion except a natural anxiety; but now, the moment I entered this apartment and closed the door behind me, I was conscious of a freezing, paralyzing fear, a sensation as real as the touch of a hand or the sound of a bell. It was something that could not be resisted. I was bathed in an atmosphere of terror. I was afraid to a degree that made my breath stop, my heart stop.... The passage leading to Penelope's bedroom was not more than six yards long, but it seemed as if it took me an hour to traverse it. I could scarcely force my lagging steps, one by one, to carry me. And every hideous moment brought me the vision of Penelope lying on that curtained bed, her beautiful face distorted, her eager young life--crushed out of her. Oh God, how I prayed! When at last I came into the bedroom I faced another struggle. There was absolute silence. No sound of breathing from the bed, although I saw a woman's form under the sheets. But not her face, which was hidden by the curtain. For a long time I stood beside that bed, rigid with fear, before I found courage to draw the curtain back. At last I drew it back and--there lay Penelope, sleeping peacefully, quite unharmed. I was stunned with relief, with amazement and--suddenly her eyes opened and she gave a wild but joyful cry and flung her arms around my neck, sobbing hysterically. "Oh! Oh! My dear, dear Seraphine! You came to me. You forgave me. You did not abandon your poor Penelope." She clung to me like a child in frantic, pitiful terror. Then she told me that she too had gone through a frightful experience. When Roberta had left her, about an hour before, to sleep in the adjoining apartment, as they had arranged with Margaret G----, Penelope had tried to compose herself on her pillow, but she had scarcely fallen into a doze when she was awakened by the same sense of horrible fear that had overcome me. She was about to die--by violence. An assassin was coming--he was near her. She could hardly breathe. It was almost beyond her power to rise from the bed and search the apartment, but she did this. There was nothing, and yet the terror persisted. She huddled herself under the bed-covers and waited, saying her prayers. And when I entered the apartment and came down the passage--so slowly, so stealthily!--she _knew_ it was the murderer coming to kill her. And when I paused at her bedside--how long it was before I drew the curtain!--she almost died again, waiting for the blow.