utstanding biological freakishness of
Peter."

"Oh!" replied Henshaw.

When Merton Gill dared to glance up a moment later the men were matching
coins at the counter. When they went out he left a half-eaten meal and
presently might have been observed on a swift-rolling street-car. He
mumbled as he blankly surveyed palm-bordered building sites along the
way. He was again rehearsing a tense scene with the Montague girl. In
actor parlance he was giving himself all the best of it. But they were
new lines he mumbled over and over. And he was no longer eluded by
the title of that book he remembered on the library shelf at Simsbury.
Sitting in the cafeteria listening to strange talk, lashed by cruel
memories, it had flashed upon his vision with the stark definition of
a screened subtitle. He rang the Montague bell twice before he heard
a faint summons to enter. Upon the parlour couch, under blankets that
reached her pillowed head, lay Sarah. She was pale and seemed to suffer.
She greeted him in a feeble voice, lids fluttering over the fires of
that mysterious fever burning far back in her eyes.

"Hullo, Kid," he began brightly. "Here's your watch." Her doubting
glance hovered over him as he smiled down at her. "You giving it to me
again, Merton?" She seemed unable to conquer a stubborn incredulity.

"Of course I'm giving it to you again. What'd you think I was going to
do?"

She still surveyed him with little veiled glances. "You look so bright
you give me Kleig eyes," she said. She managed a wan smile at this.

"Take it," he insisted, extending the package. "Of course it won't keep
Western Union time, but it'll look good on you."

She appeared to be gaining on her incredulity, but a vestige of it
remained. "I won't touch it," she declared with more spirit than could
have been expected from the perishing, "I won't touch it till you give
me a good big kiss."

"Sure," he said, and leaned down to brush her pale cheek with his lips.
He was cheerfully businesslike in this ceremony.

"Not till you do it right," she persisted. He knelt beside the couch and
did it right. He lingered with a hand upon her pale brow.

"What you afraid of?" he demanded.

"You," she said, but now she again brought the watch to view, holding
it away from her, studying its glitter from various angles. At last she
turned her eyes up to his. They Were alive but unrevealing. "Well?"

"Well?" he repeated coolly.

"Oh, stop it!" Again there was mor