“Yes!”

“For anonymous self-sacrifice? You shall die, and nobody shall know even whose memory is to be honored?”

“I want neither gratitude nor pity. I want no name.”

“Are you ready for a crime?”

The girl bent her head. “I am ready—even for a crime.”

The voice paused awhile before renewing its interrogatories. Then again: “Dost thou know,” it said at last, “that thou mayest lose thy faith in what thou now believest; that thou mayest feel that thou hast been mistaken and hast lost thy young life in vain?”

“I know that also, and nevertheless I will enter!”

“Enter, then!”

The girl crossed the threshold, and a heavy curtain fell behind her.

“A fool!” gnashed some one outside.