ll alone. You are brave, but you should not have
done that. You should have taken me with you. See, now, I shall get
well. I shall arise at once. I never knew the black horses to fail
me."

Marie struggled to her elbow and threw off the clothes. But Elaine
covered her up tight again, forcing her to lie still.

"Stay here quietly until I come back," she insisted. "I shall not be
gone but a minute."

She hurried to her own room, trying to understand what the meaning of
this impossible situation might be. Ben was here and Ben was in the
bungalow and--there was the purse. There was the chance, of course,
that Marie was mistaken, but Marie did not make such mistakes as this.
Then one of the two men was not Ben. She took out again the
pocket-book she had found and stared at it as though in hope that she
might receive her answer through this. Then with a perplexed gasp, she
threw it into one of the upset drawers, as though it burned her fingers.

She went downstairs to Donaldson. For reasons of her own she did not
dare to tell him of this fresh complication, but she insisted that he
should bother himself no more to-night with the matter.

"You should go straight back home and get some sleep," she told him.

Home? The word was flat again.

"And you?" he inquired.

"I shall try to sleep, too."

"You have a bolt on your door?"

"Yes."

"Will you promise to slide it before you retire?"

She nodded.

"If you only had a telephone in your room."

"There is one in the hall."

"Then you can call me in a moment if you should get frightened or need
me?"

"You are good."

"You will not hesitate?"

"No."

"Then I shall feel that I am still near you. I will have a cab in
waiting and on an emergency can reach here in twenty minutes. You
could keep yourself barricaded until then?"

"Yes. But really there is no need. I--"

"You have n't wrestled with him. He is strong and--mad."

Still he hesitated. If it had been possible without compromise to her
he would have remained downstairs. He could roll up in a rug and find
all the sleep that he needed.

"See here," he exclaimed, as the sane solution to the whole difficulty,
"why don't you let me take you and Marie to the Martha Washington?"

She placed her hand lightly upon his sleeve.

"I shall be all right here. You 'd best go at once and get some sleep.
Your eyes look heavy."

Every minute that he stood near her he grew more reluctant to le