"With this you could procure another weapon?"
He drew a long breath; the temptation was great.
"I could, madame."
"Then do so. It will never be known from whom I received the gun—and my need is desperate—desperate!"
He unbuckled the weapon without a word, and with it in her hand she returned to the room.
There was a tall western window, and before this she drew up a chair to watch the setting of the sun.
"Will he ring the bell when the edge of the sun touches the hills or when it is completely set?" she thought.
The white circle grew yellow; then it took on a taint of orange, bulging oddly at the sides into a clumsy oval. From the gardens below came a stir of voices and then the thrill of a girl's laughter. She smiled as she listened, and, leaning from the window, the west wind blew to her the scent of flowers. She sat there for a long time, breathing deeply of the fragrance and noting all the curves of the lawn with a still, sad pleasure. The green changed from bright to dark; when she looked up the sun had set.
As she turned from the gay western sky, the room was doubly dim and the breeze of the evening set the curtains rustling and whispering. Silence she was prepared for, but not those ghostly voices, not the shift and sweep of the shadows. She turned the electric switch, closing her eyes to blur the shock of the sudden deluge of light. The switch clicked, but when she opened her eyes the room was still dark; they had cut the connecting wires.
Thereafter her mind went mercifully blank, for what she faced was, like birth and death, beyond comprehension. Noise at the windows roused her from the daze at last and she found that a number of workmen were sealing the room so that neither light nor sound could enter or escape. The only air would be from the ventilator. And still she could not realize what had happened, what was to happen, until the last sounds of the workmen ceased and the deep, dread silence began; silence that had a pulse in it—the beating of her heart.