toward her.

"It is nothing," she replied, with a repelling gesture. "John
Bennington, was it not?"

"Yes." His eyes grew round with wonder.

"I was going to keep it secret as long as I could, but I see it is
useless. He is the man I have promised to marry." Her voice had a
singular quietness.

Warrington retreated to his desk, leaning heavily against it.

"Bennington? You are going to marry John Bennington?" dully.

"Yes."

He sat down abruptly and stared at her with the expression of one who
is suddenly confronted by some Medusa's head, as if in the straggling
wisps of hair that escaped from beneath her hat he saw the writhing
serpents. She was going to marry John Bennington!

She stepped quickly up to the desk and began to scatter things about.
Her hands shook, she breathed rapidly, her delicate nostrils dilating
the while.

"Look out!" he warned, at her side the same instant. "Your hat is
burning!" He smothered the incipient flame between his palms.

"Never mind the hat. My gloves, Dick, my gloves! I left them here on
the desk."

"Your gloves?" Then immediately he recollected that he had seen them
in Bennington's hands, but he was positive that the gloves meant
nothing to Bennington. He had picked them up just as he would have
picked up a paper-cutter, a pencil, a match-box, if any of these had
been within reach of his nervous fingers. Most men who are at times
mentally embarrassed find relief in touching small inanimate objects.
So he said reassuringly: "Don't let a pair of gloves worry you, girl."

"He bought them for me this morning," a break in her voice. "I MUST
find them!"

The situation assumed altogether a different angle. There was a hint
of tragedy in her eyes. More trivial things than a forgotten pair of
gloves have brought about death and division. Together they renewed
the search. They sifted the manuscripts, the books, the magazines,
burrowed into the drawers; and sometimes their hands touched, but they
neither noticed nor felt the contact. Warrington even dropped to his
knees and hunted under the desk, all the while "Jack Bennington, Jack
Bennington!" drumming in his ears. The search was useless. The gloves
were nowhere to be found. He stood up irresolute, dismayed and
anxious, keenly alive to her misery and to the inferences his best
friend might draw. The desk stood between them, but their faces were
within two spans of the hand.

"I can't find them."

"They are gone!" she whis