caution he managed to assume a remnant of
poise.

"Never reached him? That seems hardly possible."

She nodded. "Yes; doesn't it? I asked you at the time if you were
certain you had mailed it. Do you remember?"

"Perfectly. I said I had never forgotten to mail a letter."

"Still, he never received it--and he wrote one to me--at the same time
which I didn't get, either."

Eben Tollman licked his lips. It seemed useless to carry the fight
further. He stood with one foot over the brink and momentum at his back.
Then when another moment would have ended his campaign of dissimulation
his wife spoke again, and the man's brain reeled--but this time with an
incredulous reversal of emotion. Some miracle had saved him!

"I've just had a note from him. He's in India."

Eben Tollman straightened up, and shook from his shoulders the weight of
a decade or two.

He had been dying the multiple deaths of the coward because he had let
his imagination bolt and run away. The menace had passed, and
straightway came a transformation. Once more he was full-panoplied in
his assurance of self-righteousness. His voice was unctuously
calculated, persuasively considerate.

"That is a very extraordinary story, but you aren't letting things that
happened so long ago trouble you, are you, my dear?"

"A thing--which has caused bitterness between friends--even long ago,
must trouble one."

"Yes, I quite concur in that sentiment." He nodded understandingly. It
was the same gentleness of manner to which he had owed so much in the
past. "And yet--I don't like to speak critically of a man who was once a
rival--yet unhappily there are other things to be remembered. His
experiences in New York seemed to prove him wanting of much that your
friendship must demand."

Conscience did not answer, but she felt the justice of the criticism.

When his wife had again left him alone he lost no time in bending over
memoranda and running through papers with fingers that trembled.

Then he straightened up again. All was as he had left it. The two
intercepted letters were tied safely together and the dust which had
gathered upon their wrapper was undisturbed.

For some minutes he abandoned himself to the satisfaction of a man whose
escape has been narrow--but complete. Eventually, however, his brows
drew together with an annoyance which had strayed into his thoughts and
poisoned them. He had handled the situation ineptly and expensively.

He had given h