"I do not wish to denounce any one to-day." "What do you wish?" asked Mr. Gryce. "Let me see the man who has power to hold me here or let me go, and I will tell him." "Very well," said Mr. Gryce, and led her into the presence of the Superintendent. She was at this moment quite a different person from what she had been in the carriage. All that was girlish in her aspect or appealing in her bearing had faded away, evidently forever, and left in its place something at once so desperate and so deadly, that she seemed not only a woman but one of a very determined and dangerous nature. Her manner, however, was quiet, and it was only in her eye that one could see how near she was to frenzy. She spoke before the Superintendent could address her. "Sir," said she, "I have been brought here on account of a fearful crime I was unhappy enough to witness. I myself am innocent of that crime, but, so far as I know, there is no other person living save the guilty man who committed it, who can tell you how or why or by whom it was done. One man has been arrested for it and another has not. If you will give me two weeks of complete freedom, I will point out to you which is the veritable man of blood, and may Heaven have mercy on his soul!" "She is mad," signified the Superintendent in by-play to Mr. Gryce. But the latter shook his head; she was not mad yet. "I know," she continued, without a hint of the timidity which seemed natural to her under other circumstances, "that this must seem a presumptuous request from one like me, but it is only by granting it that you will ever be able to lay your hand on the murderer of Mrs. Van Burnam. For I will never speak if I cannot speak in my own way and at my own time. The agonies I have suffered must have some compensation. Otherwise I should die of horror and my grief." "And how do you hope to gain compensation by this delay?" expostulated the Superintendent. "Would you not meet with more satisfaction in denouncing him here and now before he can pass another night in fancied security?" But she only repeated: "I have said two weeks, and two weeks I must have. Two weeks in which to come and go as I please. Two weeks!" And no argument they could advance succeeded in eliciting from her any other response or in altering in any way her air of quiet determination with its underlying suggestion of frenzy. Acknowledging their mutual defeat by a look, the Superintendent and detective drew off to one side, and something like the following conversation took place between them. "You think she's sane?" "I do." "And will remain so two weeks?" "If humored." "You are sure she is implicated in this crime?" "She was a witness to it." "And that she speaks the truth when she declares that she is the only person who can point out the criminal?"