d taken half a million in cash, stocks, and bonds,
unregistered and hence easily hypothecated and traded on."

"And his motive?" she asked.

He looked at her long and earnestly as if making up his mind to
something. "I think," he replied, "I wanted revenge quite as much as
the money."

He said it slowly, measured, as if realizing that there was now nothing
to be gained by concealment from her, as if only he wanted to put
himself in the best light with the woman who had won from him his
secret. It was his confession!

Acquaintances with Constance ripened fast into friendships. She had
known Macey, as he called himself, only a fortnight. He had been
introduced to her at a sort of Bohemian gathering, had talked to her,
direct, as she liked a man to talk. He had seen her home that night,
had asked to call, and on the other nights had taken her to the theater
and to supper.

Delicately unconsciously, a bond of friendship had grown up between
them. She felt that he was a man vibrating with physical and mental
power, long latent, which nothing but a strong will held in check, a
man by whom she could be fascinated, yet of whom she was just a little
bit afraid.

With Macey, it would have been difficult to analyze his feelings. He
had found in Constance a woman who had seen the world in all its
phases, yet had come through unstained by what would have drowned some
in the depths of the under-world, or thrust others into the degradation
of the demi-monde, at least. He admired and respected her. He, the
dreamer, saw in her the practical. She, an adventurer in amateur
lawlessness saw in him something kindred at heart.

And so when a newspaper came to her in which she recognized with her
keen insight Lawrence Macey's face under Graeme Mackenzie's name, and a
story of embezzlement of trust company and other funds from the Omaha
Central Western Trust of half a million, she had not been wholly
surprised. Instead, she felt almost a sense of elation. The man was
neither better nor worse than herself. And he needed help.

Her mind wandered back to a time, months before, when she had learned
the bitter lesson of what it was to be a legal outcast, and had
determined always to keep within the law, no matter how close to the
edge of things she went.

Mackenzie continued looking at her, as if waiting for the answer to his
first question.

"No," she said slowly, "I am not going to hand you over. I never had
any such intention. We ar