As I leaped up the piazza steps the door was opened by a man in uniform. He touched his hat and started to speak, but I pushed him aside and came in peering past him down a hall that stretched away to the rear. At the sound of his voice a door had opened there and a woman came out. For a moment she was only a shadow moving toward me up the dimness of the half-lit passage. Then I recognized her, gave a cry and ran to her. My hands found hers and closed on them, my eyes looking down into the dark ones raised to them. Neither of us spoke, it didn’t occur to me to explain why I was there and she showed no surprise at seeing me. It seemed as if we’d known all along we were going to meet in that dark passage in that strange house. And standing there silent, hand clasped in hand, I saw something so wonderful, so unexpected, that the surroundings faded away and for me there was nothing in the world but what I read in her beautiful, lifted face. I never had dared to hope, never had thought of her as caring for me. All I had asked was the right to help and defend her. Perhaps under different circumstances, when things were happy and easy, I’d have aspired, gone in to try and win. But in the last dark month, when we’d come so close, we’d only been a woman set upon and menaced, and a man braced and steeled to do battle for her. Now, with her stone-cold hands in mine, I saw in the shining depths of her eyes—Oh, no, it’s too sacred. That part of the story is between Carol and me. There had been sounds and voices in the vestibule behind us. They came vaguely upon my consciousness, low and then breaking suddenly into a louder key, phrases, exclamations, questions. I don’t think if the house had been rocked by an earthquake I’d have noticed it, and it wasn’t till O’Mally came down the passage calling me, that I dropped her hands and turned. His face was creased into an expression of excited consternation, and he rapped out, not seeing Carol: "What the devil are you doing there? Haven’t you heard?" Then his eye catching her, "Oh, it’s Miss Whitehall. Well, young lady, you must have had a pretty tough time here last night." She simply drooped her eyelids in faint agreement. "What do you mean?" I cried, and looked from O’Mally’s boisterously concerned countenance to Carol’s worn, white one. "What is it, something more?" She gave a slight nod and said: "The last—the end this time." O’Mally wheeled on me: "She hasn’t told you. He shot himself—here, last night, shortly after she arrived." Before I had time to answer, Babbitts and the man in uniform, a police inspector, were beside us. Babbitts was speechless—as I was myself—but the inspector, pompous and stolid, answered my look of shocked amazement: "A few minutes after one. Fortunately I’d got your instructions and the house was surrounded. My men heard the report and the screams and broke in at once."