past two?"

A strange little exclamation, one almost of dismay, it seemed, escaped
her.

"The Magpie left my place an hour ago--to get his kit, I think. And I
came here at once because that was what you and I understood I was to
do, wasn't it? Jimmie, you frighten me! You are not yourself. Don't
you remember the last words you said, as you nodded to me behind the
Magpie's back--that you would be here BEFORE us? There was no mistaking
your meaning--if I could get away from him, I was to come here and meet
you."

Jimmie Dale passed his hand nervously across his eyes. Of course, he
remembered now! What a frightful turmoil his brain had been in!

"Yes; of course!" He tried to speak nonchalantly. "I had forgotten for
the moment."

She caught his arm in a quick, tight hold, shaking him in a terrified
way.

"YOU--forget a thing like that! Jimmie--something terrible has happened.
Can't you see that I am nearly mad with anxiety! What is it? What is it?
That package, Jimmie--is it the package?"

He did not answer. What could he say? It meant life, hope, joy,
everything that the world held for her--and it was gone.

"Yes--it IS the package!" she whispered frantically. "Quick, Jimmie!
Tell me! It--it was not there? You--you could not find it?"

"It was there," he said, as though the words were literally forced from
him.

"Then? Then--WHAT, Jimmie?" The clutch on his arm was like a vise.

"They got it," he said. It was like a death sentence that he pronounced.
"It is destroyed."

She did not speak or move--save that her hands, as though nerveless and
without strength, fell away from his arms, and dropped to her sides. It
was dark there under the stoop, though not so dark but that he could see
her face. It was gray--gray as death. And there was misery and fear
and a pitiful helplessness in it--and then she swayed a little, and he
caught her in his arms.

"Gone!" she murmured in a dead, colourless way--and suddenly laughed out
sharply, hysterically.

"Don't! For God's sake, don't do that!" he pleaded wildly.

She looked at him then for a moment in strange quiet--and lifted her
hand and stroked his face in a numbed way.

"It--it would have been better, Jimmie, wouldn't it," she said in the
same monotonous voice, "it would have been better if--if I had never
found out anything, and they--they had done the same to me that they did
to--to father."

"Marie! Marie!" It was the first time he had ever spoken her name, a