ll his power of will he could not look at her.

"Carlton Dunlap," she cried, leaning both hands for support on the
table, bending over and at last forcing him to look her in the eyes,
"do you know what I think of you? I think you are a damned coward.
There!"

Instead of tears and recriminations, instead of the conventional "How
could you do it?" instead of burning denunciation of him for ruining
her life, he read something else in her face. What was it?

"Coward?" he repeated slowly. "What would you have me do--take you with
me?"

She tossed her head contemptuously.

"Stay and face it?" he hazarded again.

"Is there no other way?" she asked, still leaning forward with her eyes
fixed on his. "Think! Is there no way that you could avoid discovery
just for a time? Carlton, you--we are cornered. Is there no desperate
chance?"

He shook his head sadly.

Her eyes wandered momentarily about the studio, until they rested on an
easel. On it stood a water color on which she had been working, trying
to put into it some of the feeling which she would never have put into
words for him. On the walls of the apartment were pen and ink sketches,
scores of little things which she had done for her own amusement. She
bit her lip as an idea flashed through her mind.

He shook his head again mournfully.

"Somewhere," she said slowly, "I have read that clever forgers use
water colors and pen and ink like regular artists. Think--think! Is
there no way that we--that I could forge a check that would give us
breathing space, perhaps rescue us?"

Carlton leaned over the table toward her, fascinated. He placed both
his hands on hers. They were icy, but she did not withdraw them.

For an instant they looked into each other's eyes, an instant, and then
they understood. They were partners in crime, amateurs perhaps, but
partners as they had been in honesty.

It was a new idea that she had suggested to him. Why should he not act
on it? Why hesitate? Why stop at it? He was already an embezzler. Why
not add a new crime to the list? As he looked into her eyes he felt a
new strength. Together they could do it. Hers was the brain that had
conceived the way out. She had the will, the compelling power to carry
the thing through. He would throw himself on her intuition, her brain,
her skill, her daring.

On his desk in the corner, where often until far into the night he had
worked on the huge ruled sheets of paper covered with figures of the