"I will tell you. Did you receive a letter to-day?" "Yes--I did." "You came here in answer to that letter." "Yes--I did." "Do you know who wrote that letter?" "No--not the least." "It was I--I wrote the letter." With a stifled cry of mingled fright and amazement, Helen jumped up from the chair. "You wrote the letter?" she exclaimed, incredulously. He nodded. "Yes--I wrote the letter." Her eyes opened wide with terror, her hands clasped together nervously, she exclaimed: "Then you are----" He bowed. "Exactly. I am the kidnapper of your child----" Speechless, she stared at him, her large black eyes opened wide with terror. Looking wildly about her as if seeking her little daughter, she gasped: "Dorothy? Dorothy here? Where is she?" "She is safe," he replied calmly. "Where is she, where is she? Take me to her!" she cried, distractedly, going up to him and clasping her hands in humble supplication. He shook off the hand which, in her maternal anxiety, she had laid on his arm. Lighting a cigarette, he gave a low laugh. "Plenty of time. There's no hurry. You're not going yet." Anxiously, she scrutinized his face, as if trying to read his meaning. "She's going when I go, isn't she?" He shrugged his shoulders. "That depends--on you." "What do you mean?" Again he waved her to a seat. "Sit down and I'll tell you." Trembling, she dropped once more on to a chair and waited. He puffed deliberately at his cigarette for a few moments and then, turning his glance in her direction, he smiled in a peculiar, horrible way and his eyes ran over her figure in a way that made the crimson rush furiously to her cheek. There was no mistaking that smile. It was the bold, lustful look of the voluptuary who enjoys letting his eyes feast on the prey that he knows cannot now escape him. "Mrs. Traynor," he began in the caressing, dulcet tones which she feared more than his anger, "you are an exceptional woman. To most men of my temperament you would not appeal. They would find your beauty too statuesque and cold. I know you are clever, but love cannot feed on intellect alone, I have loved many women, but never a woman just like you. Your coldness, your haughty reserve, your refinement would intimidate most men and keep them at a distance, but not me. Your aloofness, your indifference only spurs me, only adds to the acuteness of my desire. I swore to myself that I would conquer you, overcome your resistance, bend you to my will. You turned me out of your home. I swore to be avenged." He stopped for a moment and watched her closely as if studying and enjoying the effect of his words. Then, amid a cloud of blue tobacco smoke, he went on: "I knew only one way to win you--it was to humiliate you, to place you in a position where you would have to come to me on your knees." She half rose from her chair. "I would never do that," she cried. "I would rather die!"