of crime,
of the place and the tragedy he must have escaped from, the unknown
cloud he was under. But however involved in the horrible he might become
by detaining him, shaken and filled with inexplicable grief as he was by
his presence, worst of all was the fear of being alone again after a
frightful, brief adventure in his life, vanished and unexplained. He
wanted to reassure and comfort the wavering, sorrowful boy, but all he
could stammer in apology for his shout was: "Wh--where are you going?"

"What difference does it make to _you_ where I go?" asked the boy
drearily. "If you must know, I'm going to Maurice's."

Mr. Montagu sprang to his feet. With bitten lips he kept himself silent
at this final thrust of the hypernatural, but the damp beads had
returned to his brow. His terror lasted only a moment, and in his
resurging desire to hold back the boy, he demanded both curiously and
assertively:

"What are you going to _Maurice's_ for?"

He had not supposed that there was a particle of color in the pitiful
face, but as the boy answered, a delicate flesh-tint seemed to leave it,
turning him deathly white.

"I--I want to look at the women," he said.

At his agitation and pallor, the hectic whisper of his voice, above all,
the light of fiendish hate that leapt into his beautiful eyes and
ravaged their look, a physical sensation crept through the older man
from head to foot and held him motionless.

But it was not horror at the boy himself. As he stood there wan and
shivering before him, every best instinct in Henry Montagu rushed
uppermost, and he felt that he would give anything in his life, gladly
devote, if not actually give, that life itself, to set the boy right
with the world. And with his terror gone and his horror going, he
impulsively walked across the room and stood between him and the door.

"Why do you leave me this way? You mustn't mind what I say to you or how
I say it, for it can't be any more abrupt or strange than the way you
came here. I don't want you to go to Maurice's. And if you do, I'm going
with you."

"No! No!" cried the boy fearfully.

"I don't want you to leave me. I want you to confide in me. I want you
to trust me, and to tell me, without fear, what it is you've done."

"No, no, no, no! Don't ask me to!" cried the boy.

"I do ask you to. I have some right to know. I'd be justified in
detaining you if I wanted to--"

"You couldn't!" cried the trembling youth passionately.

"