The dark, muffled figure of a man leaned against a section of the old wall that edged the lake—the figure of a man who prayed with all his soul that his vigil might be in vain. If she came, all was over.

He was not armed. He had thrown his revolver away a week before. His only desire now was to learn the extent of her duplicity. If she obeyed the call of the letter then there could be no doubt that she was coming at the call of the lover. His hands twitched and he shivered as if with a dreadful chill. His heart was shouting a warning to her, but his head was urging her to come and have done with it all.

He was there early—long before the hour named in the decoy. His eyes never left the sidewalk that ran past his own home, but a short distance from the Drive. They stared without blinking across that dark border, through the circle of light from the arc lamp and far into the shadows of blackness beyond. It was very dark where he stood. The lake had battered through the sea wall for many rods at this particular point and no one ventured out beyond the bridle path for fear of slipping down into the cavities that had been washed out by the waves. His station was on the edge of the piles of stone and cement that had been tossed up to await the pleasure of the park commissioners.

For a while, he tried to take Jane's future into consideration, but it was impossible to substitute anything before his own wrongs. David Cable was not the kind of man who would go on living with a faithless wife for the sake of appearances. He was not an apologist. Time and circumstance and the power of true love would adjust the affair of Jane and Graydon Bansemer. This was HIS affair. Time could not adjust it for him.

At last he saw a woman's figure hurrying down the street. The wild, eager hope that the light from the electric lamp would prove it to be other than that of his wife was quickly dispelled. His worst fears were true, His Frances—his wife of more than a score of years, his pretty sweetheart through all those days, was false to him! As he fell back against the wall something seemed to snap in his breast; a groan of misery arose to his lips.

With eyes which saw red with rage and anguish, he watched the hesitating approach of the woman. She stopped at the corner and looked up and down the Drive, peering intently into the dark shadows by the lake. The sky was overcast; no stars peeped through its blackness. With uncertain, halting steps she crossed the boulevard, still glancing about as if in search of someone. He moved forward unconsciously, almost blindly, and she caught a glimpse of his tall, dark figure. He was not unlike Bansemer in height and carriage. As she drew near, his legs trembled and tears of despair flooded his eyes.

A savage desire to grasp her by the throat and hurl her into the waters beyond the break came over him with irresistible power. Then came the pitiable collapse which conquered the murderous impulses and left him weak and broken for the moment. With a sob he turned and leaned upon the wall, his back to her, his face buried in his tense arms—crushed, despised, dishonoured! Kill her? The horror of it swept his brain clear for an instant. Kill his pretty Frances? Kill Jane's mother? How could he think of it?

It was a long time before the wretched man knew that she was standing close behind him and was speaking to him. The sound of her voice came through the noise of his pounding heart as if it were far away and gentle. But what was it that she was saying? Her voice was angry, suppressed, condemning.

"You may take it or refuse it, just as you please," were the first words his turbulent senses distinguished. "I can pay no more than that for your silence. The other is impossible. I will not discuss it again with you." She paused as if waiting for him to respond.

"To-night I shall tell my husband everything—the whole story. I cannot endure the suspense any longer. I will not live in fear of you another hour. My only reason for coming out here to-night is to plead with you to spare your son and Jane. I am not asking anything for myself. It would break Jane's heart if Graydon should refuse to marry her. You must have a heart somewhere in that—" But the words became jumbled in the ears of her listener. From time to time his mind grasped such sentences as these, paralysing in their bitterness: "I have the letters of adoption.... David will not believe what you say.... He loves me and he loves Jane.... I am willing to pay all that I have to keep it from Graydon and Jane.... But I intend to tell my husband. I will not deceive him any longer.... He will understand even though he should hate me for it. He will love Jane although she is not his own child."

David Cable seemed frozen to the spot. His brain was clearing; he was grasping the full importance of every sentence that rushed from her impassioned lips. The last appalling words fell like the blow of a club in the hands of a powerful man. He was dazed, stunned, senseless. It seemed to him that his breath had ceased to come and that his whole body had turned to stone. His wide staring eyes saw nothing ahead of him.

"Well, what have you to say?" she was demanding. "Why have you asked me to come out here? You have my final answer. What have you to say? Are you going to tell Graydon that Jane is not our child? I must know."

"Not our child?" came from the palsied lips of David Cable, so low and lifeless that the sound was lost in the swish of the water below. The intermittent red signal in the lighthouse far out in the lake blinked back at him, but to him it was a steady, vivid glare.

"Do you hear me? I have lied to my husband for the last time!" There was almost a tone of victory in the voice, now. "Do you hear me? You don't dare! David will not believe you—he will believe my—"

A terrible oath choked back the hopeful words in the woman's throat. Murder had come back into the man's heart.

"You lie!"

"David!"

"Yes, it's David! Liar! Whose child is she? Tell me?"

"David! David! For God's sake, hear me! There was no wrong, I swear it!"

"She's not my child and there's no wrong!" The sardonic laugh that followed was that of a raging maniac. "You've fooled me, you fiend! You devil!"

At that word and with one look at her husband's terribly distorted features, Frances Cable shrank back with a single terrified cry, turned from him and fled madly for her life. With the spring of the wild beast, Cable rushed after her, cursing her with every breath. In a few yards he had almost reached her, his hands outstretched to grasp her neck. But, at that instant, the frightened woman's strength suddenly gave way; her knees received the fall of the limp body. For a second she seemed huddled in a posture of prayer, then toppled over, slipped easily forward through a fissure in the wall and plunged headforemost into the chugging waters below.

In the lives even of the best of men there are moments when the human instincts are annihilated and supplanted by those of the beast. Likewise, have there been instances in which the bravest have been tried in the furnace and found wanting, while conversely, the supposedly cowards have proved to be heroes. Therefore, since no two situations can occur at a different time and yet have precisely similar conditions, it behooves us to forbear judging, lest we be judged, and to approach the following incident in this man's career as if we ourselves dwelt under a covering of glass.

From the time of his marriage up to this moment no man could have fought better the bitter struggle of life than David Cable; yet, now, in this hour—his hour of travail and temptation, he piteously succumbed. Cowardice, the most despicable of all emotions, held him in her grasp.

He sank exhausted against the wall, his eyes fixed upon the black hole through which his wife had disappeared; then, the stony glare changed suddenly to a look of realisation—horrible, stupefying. He crept to the edge and peered intently into the water, not six feet below, his eyes starting from his head.

Black, sobbing water, darkness impenetrable! The instinctive fear of apprehension caused him to look in every direction for possible eye-witnesses. Every drop of blood in his body seemed turned to ice with horror. Down there in that black, chill water lay the body of his wife, the woman he had loved through all these trying years, and he her murderer!

Terrified, trembling, panting, he tried to force himself into the water with the vague hope of saving her, after all; but even as he looked wildly about for help, a shout ready to spring from his dry throat, the natural dread of the accused facing his accuser took possession of him. Fear, abject fear, held him in grasp; he could not shout.

A man was running across the drive towards him—a long loping figure that covered the ground rapidly. With a last horrified look in the water, David Cable, craven for the moment, turned and fled through the night along the broken sea wall—fled aimlessly, his eyes unseeing, his feet possessed of wings. He knew not whither he ran, only that he was an assassin fleeing from the horrors behind.

Over the narrow strip of ground sped the long, eager figure that had darted from the shadow of the homes across the street. In hoarse, raucous tones he shouted after the fleeing man:

"Stop! Wait! Halt!"

He dashed up to the spot where he had seen two figures but a moment before, the full horror of what had happened striking him for the first time. The man was Elias Droom, and he had been an eye-witness to the dim, indistinct tragedy at the sea wall.

His presence is easily explained. He knew of Bansemer's telephone message to Mrs. Cable, together with his threat to expose her on the following morning. It was only natural that she should make a final plea—-that night, of course. The old clerk realised the danger of an encounter between his employer and his victim at a time so intense as this. He could not know that Bansemer would visit the Cable home that evening, but he suspected that such would be the case. It was his duty to prevent the meeting, if possible.

Bansemer would go too far, argued the old man; he must be stopped. That is why he lurked in the neighbourhood to turn Bansemer back before he could enter the home of David Cable.

He saw Mrs. Cable leave the house and go towards the lake. Following some distance behind he saw her cross the Drive and make her way to the sea wall. Slinking along in the shadow of the buildings, cursing his luck and Bansemer jointly, he saw the two forms come together out there by the lake.

"Too late, curse him for a fool," Droom had muttered to himself. "He ought to know this is bad business just now. She's come out to meet him, too. Worse. It's my duty to look out for him as long as he employs me. I'm doing my best and I can't help it if he betrays himself. I'd like to see him—but I can't go back on him while I'm taking money from him. Look at that!"

He chuckled softly as he saw the two figures approach each other. For all that he knew they might be contemplating a fond and loving embrace, and he was not undeceived until he saw one of the figures separate itself, run from the other and go plunging to the earth. As he started up in surprise, the other figure leaned forward and then straightened itself quickly. Droom did not hesitate. He dashed across the street, conscious that something dreadful had happened. His instant thought was that Bansemer had lost his temper and had struck the woman down.

The flight of the man was proof positive. He called him to stop, certain that it was Bansemer. The runner turned his face towards him for a moment. The light from the street may have deceived Elias Droom's eyes, but the face of the assailant was not that of James Bansemer. Droom stopped short and looked after the man, paralysed with amazement. Then he gave a snorting laugh at his own stupidity; of course, it was Bansemer. Who else could it be?

Arriving at the spot where he had last seen the couple, he was amazed to find no one there. He realised, with horror, that the woman must have been struck down; had fallen or had been thrown into the lake.

The gaunt old clerk groaned bitterly as he threw himself upon the wall and peered over into the water. He listened for the cries and struggles of the woman. Gradually his eyes solved the situation. He saw the row of piles beyond the break in the sea wall and the swishing pool inside. Every incoming wave sent a flood of water between the sturdy posts and into the cut of the wall.

Without a moment's hesitation he dropped into this seething prison, confident that the woman's body could be found there. A single glance had shown him that he could crawl upward through the break to safety and he knew that the water below was not dangerously deep.

A minute later he was scrambling out of this angry, icy water, up through the fissure, bearing in his long arms the inert form of Frances Cable. He had found her half-submerged in the pool, every sweep of the waves through the sieve-like posts covering her completely.

He dropped the body on the ground after reaching the level and took a quick shuddering glance about. Two men had stopped on the opposite of the Drive. He hesitated a second and then shouted to them. They stood stockstill in alarm. Before they could respond to his second shout, Elias Droom was tearing the woman's watch from her belt and the rings from her fingers. His strong, nervous hands found the necklace that she wore and it broke beneath their sudden jerk. Cunningly he tossed the necklace upon the ground and trampled it with his heel. The watch and rings went flying across the wall and far out into the lake.

"This woman has been slugged!" he shouted. He did not know how much of the tragedy these men had witnessed. Boldness was his cue for the moment; stealth could follow later. "She's been in the water. I'm afraid it's murder. The man who did it went that way. Yell for the police!"

If the assailant was James Bansemer, Droom was doing his duty by him. If it was another, he was doing his duty by society.