On the room fell a silence like death,--to those two actors worse than death; for it held thought infinite and complete realization at last of what might have been and was not; of what as well, unless a miracle intervened, could never be. In it they stood, each where he was, two figures in clay instead of one. Interrupting, awakening, torturing, sounded the thing they had so long expected; the impact of a step upon the floor of the porch without; a moment later another, uncertain, and another; a pause, and then, startlingly loud, the trill of an electric bell. For an instant neither stirred. It was the expected; and still there is a limit to human endurance. The girl was trembling, in a nervous tension too great to bear longer. An effort indeed she made at control; but it was a pitiful effort and futile. In surrender absolute, abandon absolute, she dropped back into her seat, her arms crossed pathetically on the surface of the library table, her face buried from sight therein. "Answer it, please," she pleaded. "I can't. I'm ashamed, unutterably; but I can't!" Again the alarm of the bell sounded; curtly short this time and insistent. Without a word or even a pause Darley Roberts obeyed. As he passed out he closed the door carefully behind him. Five minutes that seemed to the girl a lifetime dragged by. Listening, she heard the opening of the front door, the murmur of low, speaking voices,--a murmur ceasing as abruptly as it began; then, wonder of wonders, the door closed again with a snap and a retreating step sounded once, twice, as when it had come, on the floor of the porch. Following, she marked the even footfall of Roberts returning. The electric switch that he had turned on snapped back as he had found it, the intervening door opened, and he entered. But, strange to say, he did not pause or say a word. As one awakening from a dream and not yet wholly conscious, he returned silently to his former place. On his face was a look she had never seen before, which she could not fathom. "Darley." Unbelieving the girl leaned toward him appealingly. "Tell me. Wasn't it--he?" The man looked at her then, and there was that in his gray eyes that tinged her face crimson. "No. It was Harry Randall," he said. "It's all right, Elice. The miracle came." "The miracle!" The voice was uncertain again, but from a far different cause this time. "Don't keep me waiting. Tell me. Is he--well?" This time Roberts actually smiled,--smiled as he had not done before in months. "Yes; and writing like mad! That's the miracle. He's been at it steady now for twenty hours, and won't even pause to eat. He sent for Harry to deliver the message. It's inspiration he's working under and he couldn't stop to come himself, wouldn't. He said to tell you, and me, that it was all right. He'd found himself at last. Those were his words,--he'd found himself at last." As suddenly as it had come the smile passed, and Roberts stood up, his big hands locked behind his back.