an odd effect upon men and women; it sharpens their tragical
instincts and perceptions and dulls eternally the edge of tenderness
and sentimentality. It was natural for Kitty to possess the keenest
perceptions of tragedy; but she had been taken out of the reportorial
field in time to preserve all her tenderness and romanticism.
Otherwise she would have seen in that crumpled object with the
sinister daub of blood on the forehead merely a story, and would
have approached it from that angle. But was he dead? She literally
forced her steps toward the body and stared. She dropped to her
knees because they were threatening to buckle in one of those
flashes of physical incoordination to which the strongest will must
bow occasionally. She was no longer afraid of the tragedy, but she
feared the great surging pity that was striving to express itself
in sobs; and she knew that if she surrendered she would forthwith
become hysterical for the rest of the evening and incompetent to
carry out the plan in her head.

A strong, healthy young man done to death in this fashion only a few
minutes after he had left her kitchen! Somehow she could not look
upon him as a stranger. She had given him food; she had talked to
him; she had even laughed with him. He was not like those dead she
had seen in her reportorial days. Her orbit and Johnny Two-Hawks'
had indeterminately touched; she had known old Gregory, or Gregor,
who had been this unfortunate young man's friend. And he had hoped
they might never meet again!

The murderous scoundrels had been watching. They must have entered
the apartment shortly after he had entered hers. Conceivably they
would have Gregor's key. And they had watched and waited, striking
him down it may have been at the very moment he had crossed the