nest, deeply lined face twitched
painfully; for he could feel her scorn passing over him like a winter
blast. He faltered:

"I was helpless, ma'am. I only did as he ordered. He thought it best.
He believed it wouldn't leak out. We took all precautions." He told
her how Lawrence Teck had taken him from the Greenwich Village house to
an obscure hotel, where they had found a strange gentleman, slender,
with a fatigued, nervous face, almost too fastidiously dressed to be
another traveler, smoking constantly, saying nothing. This gentleman's
name--it was altogether a disjointed, feverish business anyway--had
never been pronounced in Parr's hearing. The stranger had seemed at
once a torment and a comfort to Mr. Teck. Occasionally, when Parr
entered, it was as if he had interrupted a distressing scene. Mr. Teck
had then jumped up with a queer smile, knocking against the chairs as
he went to look out of the window. There the strange gentleman would
join him, to put his hand on his shoulder, soothe him in a low voice.
Then one morning Mr. Teck's rooms were empty; and the hotel clerk
handed Parr an envelope containing some banknotes and the scrawl,
"Good-by. God bless you. Remember, keep quiet."

"Here it is, ma'am."

She snatched the note from him, pored over it fiercely, and thrust it
into the bosom of her gown. Her lashes wearily veiled her implacable
stare.

"You fool. You should have seen that he wasn't in his senses. Where
is he now?"

"He should be there," Parr quavered. "By this time he might be inland."

She saw a stream of men flowing in through the jungle, a human river
doomed to roll at last over some tragic brink. She clenched her hands,
seemed about to rise and rush out, as she was, in pursuit. She said:

"You are going with me."

His jaw sagged. Gaping round him, taking the whole room as witness to
this folly, he cried out, "Where to?" When she began to speak he
sagged forward over his cane, drinking in the verification of her
incredible desire. Her attitude did not change; her face remained
cold; her lips hardly moved; but he was aware of a tremendous force
behind the words, of something inflexible, invincible, grand--perhaps
of a flame without heat that filled her empty heart with an unearthly
coruscation, like a radiance thrown back from the walls of a cavern of
ice.

"Do you want to die, ma'am?"

"I?" Her voice expressed in that syllable such arrogance as youth
feels at the t