ed you
to see where I stand with Di; and now I want you to promise me that you'll
not leave these rooms till I see you again. I'll get you clear; I'll save
you, Dan."

"Flood! Oh, my God, Flood!" The voice was broken.

"You've got to stay here, and you're to remember not to get the funk, even
if I don't come before midnight. I'll be here then, if I'm alive. If you
don't keep your word--but, there, you will." Both hands gripped the
graceful shoulders of the miscreant like a vise.

"So help me, Flood," was the frightened, whispered reply. "I'll make it up
to you somehow, some day. I'll pay you back."

Rawley caught up his cap from the table.

"Steady!--steady! Don't go at a fence till you're sure of your seat, Dan,"
he said. Then, with a long look at the portrait on the wall and an
exclamation which the other did not hear, he left the room with a set,
determined face.

* * * * *

"Who told you? What brought you, Flood?" the girl asked, her chin in her
long, white hands, her head turned from the easel to him, a book in her
lap, the sun breaking through the leaves upon her hat, touching the Titian
hair with splendor.

"Fate brought me, and didn't tell me," he answered, with a whimsical quirk
of the mouth and his trouble lurking behind the sea-deep eyes.

"Wouldn't you have come if you knew I was here?" she urged, archly.

"Not for two thousand dollars," he answered, the look of trouble deepening
in his eyes, but his lips were smiling. He had a quaint sense of humor,
and at his last gasp would have noted the ridiculous thing. And surely it
was a droll malignity of Fate to bring him here to her whom, in this
moment of all moments in his life, he wished far away. Fate meant to try
him to the uttermost. This hurdle of trial was high, indeed.

"Two thousand dollars--nothing less?" she inquired, gayly. "You are too
specific for a real lover."

"Fate fixed the amount," he added, dryly.

"Fate--you talk so much of Fate," she replied, gravely, and her eyes
looked into the distance. "You make me think of it, too, and I don't want
to do so. I don't want to feel helpless, to be the child of Accident and
Destiny."

"Oh, you get the same thing in the 'fore-ordination' that old Minister
M'Gregor preaches every Sunday. 'Be elect or be damned,' he says to us
all. Names aren't important; but, anyhow, it was Fate that led me here."

"Are you sure it wasn't me?" she asked, softly. "A