Bond Street, yesterday alone, three detectives
called at different times. The thing can't go on. The money that we
should save ready to escape at the end, you spend, living like this.
And the girl Lois--you are letting her slip out of your fingers."

"My dear Rachael," he answered, "in the first place, there is not a
thread of evidence to connect you or me with any one of these places,
or with Huntley's office. In the second place, I am not letting Lois
slip out of my fingers. She will be of age in three weeks' time, and
on her birthday I am going to take her away from Rochester, whatever
means I have to use, and I am going to marry her at once. You think
that I am reckless. Well, one must live. Remember that I am young and
you are old. I have no place in the world except the place I make for
myself. I cannot live in a pig-sty amongst the snows like Naudheim. I
cannot find the whole elixir of life in thoughts and solitude as he
does. There are other things--other things for men of my age."

"You sail too near the wind. You are reckless."

"Perhaps I am," he answered. "Life in ten years' time may very well
become a stranger place to those who are alive and who have been
taught the truth. But life, even as we know it to-day, is strange
enough. Rachael, have you ever loved anyone?"

The woman seemed to become nerveless. She sank into a chair.

"Of the past I do not speak," she said--"I choose never to speak."

He took up his hat.

"No!" he remarked. "One sees easily enough that there are things in
your past, Rachael. Sometimes the memory may burn. You see, I am
living through those days now. The fire has hold of me, and not all
the knowledge I have won, not all the dim coming secrets, from before
the face of which some day I will tear aside the veil, not all the
experiences through which I and I alone have passed, can help me
to-day. So perhaps," he added, turning toward the door, "I am a little
reckless."

Rachael let him depart without uttering a word. She turned in her
chair to watch him cross the square. He was drawing on his light kid
gloves. His silk hat was a mirror of elegance. His gold-headed stick
was thrust at exactly the right angle under his arm. He swaggered a
little--a new accomplishment, and he had the air of one who is well
aware that he graces the ground he treads upon.

The woman looked away from him, and with a slow, painful movement her
head drooped a little until it reached her hands. A sli