Upon the antique writing-desk that housed the safe burned a single lamp of low candle-power.  A door that led to the adjoining bedchamber was tightly shut.  Sofia’s mistrustful eyes reconnoitred every corner of the room, and reckoned it empty.  Again obedient to undisputed impulse, she stepped inside and shut the door.  The spring-latch of the American lock found its socket with a soft click.  Thereafter, silence, no sound in the boudoir, none from the room beyond.  But to Sofia the hurried beating of her heart reverberated on the stillness like the rolling of a drum.

Without clear appreciation of how she had got there, she found herself standing over the writing-desk, and discovered what the indifferent light had till now kept hidden, that a false panel in the front of the desk had been thrust back, exposing the face of the safe, and that this last was not even closed.

At the same time she grew conscious that her hands were shaking violently, that her every limb, her whole body indeed, was agitated by desperate trembling.  And dully asked herself why this should be ...  But didn’t hesitate.

Her actions now more than ever resembled those of an unthinking puppet, although she knew quite well what she was doing; and her gestures might have been the fruit of long lessoning at the hands of some master of stage melodrama, so true were they to theatrical convention.

With furtive, frightened glances toward both doors, Sofia dropped to her knees before the safe....

When she stood up again her hands were filled with jewellery, her two hands held a treasure of incalculable price in precious stones.

She paused for a little, staring at them with dilate eyes dark in a pale, rapt face.  Her lips were parted, but only her quickened breathing whispered past them.  She was trembling more painfully than ever.  But she seemed unable to think of anything but the jewels, her gaze was held in fascination by their coruscant loveliness as revealed by the light of the little lamp.

Hers for the taking!

Then, without warning, a tremendous convulsion laid hold on her body and soul, and she was racked and shaken by it, and at its crisis her outstretched hands opened and showered the top of the desk with jewels, then flew to her head and clutched her throbbing temples.

She cried out in a low voice of suffering:  "No!"

And of a sudden she was reeling back from the desk, toward the corridor door, repeating over and over on an ascending scale:  "No! no! no! no! no!"

Her quaking legs blundered against a chair, her knees gave, she tottered to fall; strong arms caught her, held her safe, a voice she knew yet didn’t know in its guarded key muttered in her ear:  “Thank God!”

She made no struggle, but her eyes of pain and terror sought the speaker’s face, and saw that he was the man Nogam.  In extremity of amazement she spoke his name.  He shook his head.