e can't stop. Tell
me exactly everything."

Anxiety drove the colour from her cheeks. She shrank back.

"You must tell me," he urged. "I'd rather hear it from you than from Dr.
Rockwell, or Jim, or your father. Your telling wouldn't hurt as much as
anybody else's, if there has to be any hurt. Don't you understand--but
don't you understand?" he urged.

She nodded to herself in the mirror on the wall opposite. "I'll try
to understand," she replied presently; "Tell me, then: have they put
someone in my place?"

"I understand so," she replied.

He remained silent for a moment, his face very pale. "Who is running the
show?" he asked.

She told him.

"Oh, him!" he exclaimed. "He's dead against my policy. He'll make a
mess."

"They say he's doing that," she remarked.

He asked her a series of questions which she tried to answer frankly,
and he came to know that the trouble between the two towns, which, after
the Orange funeral and his own disaster had subsided, was up again; that
the railways were in difficulties; that there had been several failures
in the town; that one of the banks--the Regent-had closed its doors;
that Felix Marchand, having recovered from the injury he had received
from Gabriel Druse on the day of the Orange funeral, had gone East for a
month and had returned; that the old trouble was reviving in the mills,
and that Marchand had linked himself with the enemies of the group
controlling the railways hitherto directed by himself.

For a moment after she had answered his questions, there was strong
emotion in his face, and then it cleared.

He reached out a hand towards her. How eagerly she clasped it! It was
cold, and hers was so warm and firm and kind.

"True friend o' mine!" he said with feeling. "How wonderful it is
that somehow it all doesn't seem to matter so much. I wonder why? I
wonder--Tell me about yourself, about your life," he added abruptly, as
though it had been a question he had long wished to ask. In the tone was
a quiet certainty suggesting that she would not hesitate to answer.

"We have both had big breaks in our lives," he went on. "I know that.
I've lost everything, in a way, by the break in my life, and I've an
idea that you gained everything when the break in yours came. I didn't
believe the story Jethro Fawe told me, but still I knew there was some
truth in it; something that he twisted to suit himself. I started life
feeling I could conquer the world like another Alex