The cold, fresh breeze blowing in her face proved wonderfully invigorating. She let her head sink back upon the cushions of the easy, comfortable leather chair and drank in the clean air in great deep draughts, with a sense of renewing vigor, both bodily and spiritual. The water helped, too: she dabbled the tip of a ridiculously small handkerchief in it and bathed her throbbing temples. The while, Anisty stood over her, waiting with discrimination if with scant patience. What was to come she neither knew nor greatly cared; but, with an instinctive desire to postpone the inevitable moment of trial, she simulated deadly languor for some moments after becoming conscious of her position: and lay passive, long lashes all but touching her cheeks,--in which now a faint color was growing,--gaze wandering at random out over a dreary wilderness of flat rectangular roofs, livid in the moonlight, broken by long, straight clefts of darkness in whose depths lights gleamed faintly. Far in the south the sky came down purple and black to the horizon, where a silver spark glittered like a low-swung star: the torch of Liberty. "I think," Anisty's clear-cut tones, incisive as a razor edge, crossed the listless trend of her thoughts: "I think we will now get down to business, my lady!" She lifted her lashes, meeting his masterful stare with a look of calm inquiry. "Well?" "So you're better now? Possibly it was a mistake to give you that rest, my lady. Still, when one's a gentleman-cracksman----!" He chuckled unpleasantly, not troubling to finish his sentence. "Well?" he mocked, seating himself easily upon an adjacent table. "We're here at last, where we'll suffer no interruptions to our little council of war. Beyond the watchman, there's probably not another soul in the building; and from that window there it is a straight drop of twenty-four stories to Broadway, while I'm between you and the door. So you may be resigned to stay here until I get ready to let you go. If you scream for help, no one will hear you." "Very well," she assented mechanically, turning her head away with a shiver of disgust. "What is it you want?" "The jewels," he said bluntly. "You might have guessed that." "I did...." "And have saved yourself and me considerable trouble by speaking ten minutes ago." "Yes," she agreed abstractedly. "Now," he continued with a hint of anger in his voice, "you are going to tell." She shook her head slightly. "Oh, but you are, my lady." And his tone rasped, quickened with the latent brutality of the natural criminal. "And I know that you'll not force me to extreme measures. It wouldn't be pleasant for you, you know; and I promise you I shall stop at nothing whatever to make you speak."