d remarked. "But this morning we were to have a real talk about
your affairs, and let's get to the subject."

She had motioned him to a chair beside the quaint old desk, and they
were now sitting face to face. Isabel Sherwood looked as much the
finished patrician as on the evening before, and with that easy,
whimsical humor and the direct manner of the person who is sure of
herself; and in the sober, disillusioning daylight she had no less
of beauty than had seemed hers in the softer lighting of their first
meeting. The clear, fresh face with its violet-blue eyes was gazing at
him intently. Larry realized that she was looking into the very soul of
him, and he sat silent during this estimate which he recognized she had
the right to make.

"Mr. Hunt has written me the main facts about you, certainly the worst,"
she said finally. "You need tell me nothing further, if you prefer not
to do so; but it might be helpful if I knew more of the details."

Larry felt that there was no information he was not willing to give this
clear-eyed, charming woman; and so he told her all that had happened
since his return from Sing Sing, including his falling in love with
Maggie, the nature of their conflict, her departure into the ways of her
ambition.

"You are certainly facing a lot of difficult propositions." Miss
Sherwood checked them off on her fingers. "The police are after
you--your old friends are after you--you do not dare be caught. You
want to clear yourself--you want to make a business success--you want
to eradicate Maggie's present ambitions and remove her from her present
influences."

"That is the correct total," said Larry.

"Certainly a large total! Of them all, which is the most important
item?"

Larry considered. "Maggie," he confessed. "But Maggie really includes
all the others. To have any influence with her, I must get out of the
power of the police, I must overcome her belief that I am a stool and
a squealer, and I must prove to her that I can make a success by going
straight."

"Just so. And all these things you must do while a fugitive in hiding."

"Exactly. Or else not do them."

"H'm!... The most pressing thing, I judge, is to have a safe and
permanent place to hide, and to have work which may lead to an
opportunity to prove yourself a success."

"Yes."

"Mr. Hunt's O.K. on you would be sufficient, in any event, and he has
given that O.K.," Miss Sherwood said in her even voice. "Besides, my own
ju