Viewed even from a distance there could be no mistaking the meaning, the hideous significance of it all.  And Nancy, gazing from a window in the house on the hill, shrank in terror before that which she believed to be the result of the cruel work to which she had lent herself.

It had been a dreary, heartbreaking night of sleepless watching and poignant feeling.  Nancy was alone in her prison, a beautiful apartment, the best in the house.  Bull Sternford had conducted her thither personally, and, in doing so, had told her the thing he was doing, and of his real desire to save her unnecessary distress.

“You see,” he had explained, with a gentleness which Nancy felt she had no right to expect, “there’s just about the best of everything right here.  It’s as it was left by the feller who designed and decorated it for the woman he loved better than anything in life.  No one’s ever used it since.  I’d be glad for you to have it.  We’ve only a Chink servant to wait around on us, and a rough choreman, and I guess they don’t know a thing about fixing things for a woman.  But they’ve kept it clean and wholesome, and that’s all I can say.  Can you make out in it to-night?”

He smiled.  Then his steady eyes had turned away to the window where the light of the raging fire could be seen.  And after a moment he went on.

“You’re a prisoner.  I can’t help that.  That’s got to be.  But no lock or bolt will be set to keep you here.  You’re free to come and go as you choose.  You can make the doors of the room fast against intrusion, if you feel that way.  But there’ll be none.  To-night you’ll just be dead alone in the place.  You see, I’ve got to get out and pull my weight down there.”

So he had left her.  He had left her to a punishment more desperate than anything he could have designed.  Her windows looked out over the mill.  And a subtle force attracted her thereto, and held her sleepless and despairing the whole night long.  She had been forced to sit there watching the tragedy being enacted.  A tragedy with which she knew she was connected, and for which, in her exaggerated self-condemnation, she believed herself responsible.

The agony of that prolonged vigil would never be forgotten.  Fascinated, dreading, every act of it seared the girl’s soul as with a red hot brand.  It was the Skandinavia’s work.  The agents of the Skandinavia.  And she knew that she, perhaps, was their principal agent.  The rattle of machine guns.  The human slaughter.  She had witnessed the terror of it all in the fierce light of the conflagration which looked to be devouring the whole world of the mills.  She could never forget it.  She could never forgive herself her share in the ghastly plans for that hideous destruction.  But more than all she knew she could never forgive, or again associate herself with those who had designed the inhuman work of it all and plunged her into the maelstrom of its execution.