o. It is all straightened out now. All that remains for you to do
is to find him and say that I--that I wish him to come back for lunch."

"Is it that simple?"

He smiled, his easy-going nature glad to seize upon anything that
promised relief from such a jumble as this.

"You must say nothing more than that," she put in, frightened at the
sound of her own words. Supposing that he would not come--supposing
that even now she had presumed too far?

"You will tell him just that?"

"Yes," he agreed, "and this morning I would have thought that it was
enough."

"It is enough now--whatever happens," she said hastily.

"I must hurry back to Marie," she concluded breathlessly. "You must
not delay. It may be that he is planning to leave town. If so, you
must catch him before he starts."

He placed his arm tenderly about her slight waist and led her to the
foot of the stairs.

"You will let me know as soon as you come in?" she pleaded.

"Yes, and don't worry while I 'm gone."

Arsdale did not take a cab. He needed a walk to clear his head. The
air was balmy with the fragrance of growing things and he was sensitive
to its influence as he had never been in his life. As he strode along
he felt twice his normal size. And yet what a puppet he was as
compared to this Donaldson who had been willing to take upon his
shoulders the ghastly burden which had been his own. He himself might
bear it to-day, but yesterday it would have crushed him. He had not
realized how low he had sunk until he learned that it was considered a
possibility that he might have committed such crimes as those. If at
first the suspicion had roused his wrath, the sober truth that Jacques
under the same influence was actually guilty had been enough to disarm
him. The past was like a nightmare, and this Donaldson was the man who
had found his hand in the dark and roused him. He quickened his pace.
A small black dog nosing about the fresh dirt thrown from an excavation
to his left attracted his attention to a new house which was going up.
He glanced at the men at work and then stood still in his tracks. Down
there, in his shirt sleeves, bent over a shovel was Peter Donaldson.

It was impossible to believe, but he stared at the illusion with his
hands getting cold. Then he turned back to the dog. It was the same
pup Donaldson had brought into the house with him.

He riveted his eyes once more upon the figure standing out among his
fellow w