proof to act on. I haven't succeeded. Not yet. Nothing definite. If I
can't, I shall act without. That's all."

"If I told him even half of what you just said," she said, looking at
him. "What would happen?"

"You see, I trust you," he answered bitterly.

She shook her head, but her eyes were soft and tender as she said:

"It wasn't trust in me made you say all that, it was because you didn't
care what happened after."

"No," he said. "But when I see you, I forget everything. Do you love
me?"

"Why, I've never even seen you yet," she exclaimed with something like
a smile. "I only know you as two eyes over a tangle of hair that I
don't believe you ever either brush or comb. Do you know, sometimes I am
curious."

He took her hand and drew her to sit beside him on the bench under a
tree near by. All his doubts and fears and suspicions he set far from
him, and remembered nothing save that she was the woman for whom yearned
all the depths of his soul as by pre-ordained decree. And she, too, for
man, to her strange, aloof, mysterious, but dominating all her life as
though by primal necessity.

When they parted, it was with an agreement to meet again that evening,
and in the twilight they spent a halcyon hour together, saying little,
feeling much.

It was only when at last she had left him that he remembered all that
had passed, that had happened, that he knew, suspected, dreaded, all
that he planned and intended and would be soon called upon to put into
action.

"She's made me mad," he said to himself, and for a long time he sat
there in the darkness, in the stillness of the evening, motionless as
the tree in whose shade he sat, plunged in the most profound and strange
reverie, from which presently his quick ear, alert and keen even when
his mind was deep in thought, caught the light and careful sound of an
approaching footstep.

In a moment he was up and gliding through the darkness to meet who was
coming, and almost at once a voice hailed him cautiously.

"There you are, Dunn," Deede Dawson said. "I've been looking for you
everywhere. Tomorrow or next day we shall be able to strike; everything
is ready at last, and I'll tell you now exactly what we are going to
do."

"That's good news," said Dunn softly.

"Come this way," Deede Dawson said, and led Dunn through the darkness to
the gate that admitted to the Bittermeads grounds from the high road.

Here he paused, and stood for a long time in silence, le