The hateful ticker drew her back with its light clatter.  Perhaps at last it had good tidings to offer.  Unless it brought them soon it would bring them too late—­like a reprieve after execution.  She took the narrow thread of paper in her hand and glanced at its latest entries.  As she watched the small type wheel revolve and stamp, it broke upon her that the inanimate herald was spelling out, letter by letter, a familiar name.

“E-D-W-A-R-D-E-S A-N-D E-D-W-A-R-D-E-S.”

With a smothered shriek Mary Burton dropped the tape as though it had scorched her fingers.  She groped her way half-blindly to the chair by Jefferson’s desk, and, sinking into it, buried her face in her crossed arms.  She could not have shed a tear or uttered a word.  She was paralyzed in an icy terror.  That was how all these other announcements had begun:  With the name of the failing firm.  After what seemed a decade she drew herself up and sat erect and white, trembling from her throat to her feet.  She forced her agonized features into a semblance of artificial calm.  Suppose he should return to her now, defeated, ruined, crushed, and open his door on that picture of despair and surrender!

The clock said two-fifty-five.  So she had been sitting here ten minutes!  Grasping the arms of her chair and bracing herself, she rose with a labored effort and went resolutely back to the ticker where, as one draws aside a veil which may reveal tragedy, she picked up the tape again.  She saw no name this time, and suddenly it occurred to her that the monstrous thing had passed callously on to other news—­as though there were other news!

She dragged it out of its twisted coils in the basket and read in cold, unpunctuated capitals, EDWARDES AND EDWARDES FAIL TO MEET OBLIGATIONS.

The girl reeled and leaned limply against the wall, and, as she stood there overpowered and dizzy, a low incoherent moan came up from her throat.  Then as she mechanically held the tenuous death-warrant in her pulseless fingers, her eyes fell on an item just finished.

MARKET TAKES TURN BURTON BROKERS BIDDING UP.

A comprehension came to her and her brain reeled in fury and torture.  Now that his end was accomplished, the Great Bear had turned bull.  He would sell back on the rise what he had slaughtered on the fall, and when tomorrow’s reaction came with its roster of deluded misery he would harvest vast profits on his massacre.

She heard a sound beyond the ground glass as though a hand groped before its fingers found and closed upon the knob.  Then slowly the door swung inward, and Jefferson Edwardes entered.  His overcoat hung over one arm, and, as Mary saw his face, her hands clutched at her heart, but he did not seem to see her—­or to see anything.  With a most careful deliberation the ruined man closed the door silently behind him.  He did it as though he were entering a sick room where he must guard against disturbing the patient with the slightest sound.  Then he took a step or two forward and halted to stand gazing straight ahead of him, while with the sleeve of one arm he brushed at his forehead and moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue.