ot
meet alone. I, too, will go to No. 74 West L---- Street, east side."
Then she hesitated. "Perhaps I would not be admitted," she thought.

Plans for overcoming this obstacle flashed through her brain like
lightning. She seized upon what appeared to her the most feasible.

"If I will counterfeit her," she said, feverishly; "I will disguise
myself."

She hurried back into the studio and stood for a moment before the
easel. Yes, yes; she could do it. Her figure was much the same, dress
gray and plain, hair low upon the forehead--a veil would make it
complete.

"Oh," she muttered, "how I hate your baby face! Look! I will kill you,
you fool--you fool!"

Again that sickening, fascinating terror of this unknown woman came upon
her. Hastily turning from the portrait she listened a second for the
artist's step. As she did so her eye caught the weapons on the wall.
Without a moment's hesitation she plucked the jewel-hilted stiletto from
its place, and concealing it beneath her cloak hurried from the house.

* * * * *

An hour later the artist burst into the studio. His bloodshot eyes, and
face blackened with travel, made him almost unrecognizable. Hurrying
through to his room beyond he glanced eagerly at the clock. It was on
the stroke of five.

"Just time to make myself presentable and reach the place by six," he
thought.

Then, turning, he surveyed himself in a mirror.

"Good heavens, what a spectacle I am! People must have thought I was a
maniac--and they were not far from wrong--but I am all right now. I am
going to Eva and confess my villainy, and ask her forgiveness. I will
swear my faith to her. She will forgive me--she must forgive me. And as
for Evelin, all is over with her after what passed last night. Last
night! was it only last night? It seemed an age."

He made a quick motion as if to drive away an unpleasant memory, then
throwing off his outer garments he opened the door of a little
dressing-room.

"I will bathe, and confess, and be born again," he said, with a little
laugh.

Twenty minutes afterward he emerged a new man in reality--as far as
outward appearances were concerned. Cleanly shaven and scrupulously
attired, no one would have recognized in him the dusty, wild-looking
figure of an hour before. He glanced at the clock.

"Yes--I have plenty of time," he thought. "No. 74 West L----Street, east
side; I will look at her letter again to make sure. Bless her swe