ould beset the soul of man.
Moffatt's voice had recovered its usual cordial note, and the warmth of
his welcome dispelled Ralph's last apprehension.

"Why, yes, everything's going along first-rate. They thought they'd hung
us up last week--but they haven't. There may be another week's delay;
but we ought to be opening a bottle of wine on it by the Fourth."

An office-boy came in with a name on a slip of paper, and Moffatt looked
at his watch and held out a hearty hand. "Glad you came. Of course I'll
keep you posted...No, this way...Look in again..." and he steered Ralph
out by another door.

July came, and passed into its second week. Ralph's lawyer had obtained
a postponement from the other side, but Undine's representatives had
given him to understand that the transaction must be closed before the
first of August. Ralph telephoned once or twice to Moffatt, receiving
genially-worded assurances that everything was "going their way"; but he
felt a certain embarrassment in returning again to the office, and
let himself drift through the days in a state of hungry apprehension.
Finally one afternoon Henley Fairford, coming back from town (which
Ralph had left in the morning to join his boy over Sunday), brought word
that the Apex consolidation scheme had failed to get its charter. It was
useless to attempt to reach Moffatt on Sunday, and Ralph wore on as he
could through the succeeding twenty-four hours. Clare Van Degen had come
down to stay with her youngest boy, and in the afternoon she and Ralph
took the two children for a sail. A light breeze brightened the waters
of the Sound, and they ran down the shore before it and then tacked out
toward the sunset, coming back at last, under a failing breeze, as the
summer sky passed from blue to a translucid green and then into the
accumulating greys of twilight.

As they left the landing and walked up behind the children across the
darkening lawn, a sense of security descended again on Ralph. He could
not believe that such a scene and such a mood could be the disguise of
any impending evil, and all his doubts and anxieties fell away from him.

The next morning, he and Clare travelled up to town together, and at the
station he put her in the motor which was to take her to Long Island,
and hastened down to Moffatt's office. When he arrived he was told that
Moffatt was "engaged," and he had to wait for nearly half an hour in
the outer office, where, to the steady click of the ty