speaking with almost glib facility: "There was an engineers'
contest for a projected bridge over Michamac Strait. I started to draw
plans, that I might enter the contest, but I did not finish in time.
The plans of the other engineers were all rejected. I continued to
work on mine. After the contest I happened to pick up a piece of torn
plan out of the office wastebasket, and it gave me a suggestion how to
improve the central span of my bridge."

"Yes?" asked the girl, her interest deepening.

He again licked his lips, hesitated, and continued: "There was no
name on that torn plan--nothing to indicate to whom it had belonged.
So I used it--that is, the suggestion I got from it, and was awarded
the bridge on my plans. This made me the Resident Engineer of the
bridge, and I had it almost completed when this man Blake came back
from Africa after Genevieve, and claimed that I had--had stolen his
plans of the bridge. It seems they were lost in Mr. Leslie's office.
He claimed he had handed them in to me for the contest. But so had
all the other contestants, and their plans were not lost. It may have
been that one of the doorkeepers tore his plans up, out of
revenge. Blake was a very rough brute of a fellow at that time. He
quarreled with the doorkeeper because the man would not admit him
to see Mr. Leslie--threatened to smash him. Afterwards he accused
Mr. Leslie of stealing his plans."

"Oh, no, no! he couldn't have done that! He can't be that kind of a
man!" protested Isobel.

"It's true! Even he will not deny it. Old Leslie thought him
crazy--then. It was different when he came back and accused me! He had
been shipwrecked with Genevieve. They were alone together all those
weeks, and so one can--" Ashton checked himself. "No, you must not
think--He saved her. When they came back he claimed the bridge as his
own--those lost plans."

"His plans? So that was it! And you--?"

"Of course they believed him. What was my word against his with
Genevieve and Leslie. Leslie's consulting engineer was an old pal of
Blake's. So of course I--I'll say though that Blake agreed to put it
that I had only borrowed his idea of the central span."

"That was generous of him, if he really believed--"

"Did he?--did Genevieve? Do they believe it now? You see why I must go
away."

"I don't any such thing," rejoined the girl.

"You don't?" he exclaimed. "When they are coming here, believing I
did it! They must believe it, all of them! And