d do you think I'll let anything stop me
now! I tell you, no--a thousand times no!"

She made no answer. There was only her low, quick breathing coming from
somewhere near him. He made another step toward the lamp--and stopped.

"I tell you, no!" he said again, and took another step forward--and
stopped once more.

Still she made no answer. A minute passed--another. His hand lifted and
swept across his forehead in an agitated way. Still silence. She neither
moved nor spoke. His hand dropped slowly to his side. There was a queer,
twisted smile upon his lips.

"You win!" he said hoarsely.

"Thank you, Jimmie," she said simply.

"And your name, who you are"--he was speaking, but he did not seem to
recognise his own voice--"the hundred other things I've sworn I'd make
you explain when I found you, are all taboo as well, I suppose!"

"Yes," she said.

He laughed bitterly.

"Don't you know," he cried out, "that between the police and the
underworld, our house of cards is likely to collapse at any minute--that
they are hunting the Gray Seal day and night! Is it to be always like
this--that I am never to know--until it is too late!"

She came toward him out of the darkness impulsively.

"They will never get you, Jimmie," she said, in a suppressed voice. "And
some day, I promise you now, you shall have your reward for to-night.
You shall know--everything."

"When?" The word came from him with fierce eagerness.

"I do not know," she answered gently. "Soon, perhaps--perhaps sooner
than either of us imagine."

"And by that you mean--what?" he asked, and his hand reached out for her
again through the blackness.

This time she did not draw away. There was an instant's hesitation; then
she spoke again hurriedly, a note of anxiety in her voice.

"You are beginning all over again, aren't you, Jimmie? And I have told
you that to-night I can explain nothing. And, besides, it is what has
brought me here that counts now, and every moment is of--"

"Yes. I know," he interposed; "but, then, at least you will tell me one
thing: Why did you come to-night, instead of sending me a letter as you
always have before?"

"Because it is different to-night than it ever was before," she replied
earnestly. "Because there is something in what has happened that I
cannot explain myself; because there is danger, and where I could not
see clearly I feared a trap, and so I dared not send what, in a letter,
could at best be only vague and