there in the hall I met
my lost love face to face.

Till that moment she had not recognized me. I ran to catch her as she
all but fell. And my touch repelled her into life, so that she shook
me off, and stood gasping: "You, of all men! You, of all men!" until I
could bear it no more, but broke again for the study-window. "Not that
way--not that way!" she cried in an agony at that. Her hands were upon
me now. "In there, in there," she whispered, pointing and pulling me
to a mere cupboard under the stairs, where hats and coats were hung;
and it was she who shut the door on me with a sob.

Doors were already opening overhead, voices calling, voices answering,
the alarm running like wildfire from room to room. Soft feet pattered
in the gallery and down the stairs about my very ears. I do not know
what made me put on my own shoes as I heard them, but I think that I
was ready and even longing to walk out and give myself up. I need not
say what and who it was that alone restrained me. I heard her name. I
heard them crying to her as though she had fainted. I recognized the
detested voice of my bete noir, Alick Carruthers, thick as might be
expected of the dissipated dog, yet daring to stutter out her name.
And then I heard, without catching, her low reply; it was in answer to
the somewhat stern questioning of quite another voice; and from what
followed I knew that she had never fainted at all.

"Upstairs, miss, did he? Are you sure?"

I did not hear her answer. I conceive her as simply pointing up the
stairs. In any case, about my very ears once more, there now followed
such a patter and tramp of bare and booted feet as renewed in me a base
fear for my own skin. But voices and feet passed over my head, went up
and up, higher and higher; and I was wondering whether or not to make a
dash for it, when one light pair came running down again, and in very
despair I marched out to meet my preserver, looking as little as I
could like the abject thing I felt.

"Be quick!" she cried in a harsh whisper, and pointed peremptorily to
the porch.

But I stood stubbornly before her, my heart hardened by her hardness,
and perversely indifferent to all else. And as I stood I saw the
letter she had written, in the hand with which she pointed, crushed
into a ball.

"Quickly!" She stamped her foot. "Quickly--if you ever cared!"

This in a whisper, without bitterness, without contempt, but with a
sudden wild entreaty that br