writing table--"

"Ah!"

"Yes, perhaps I can discover some note, some indication, some proof--"

"It's a dangerous game."

"I have everything to gain."

"I wish I could stay here with you," she said. "Have you no friend, no
one whom you could trust in this delicate matter?"

"Why, yes--Jack."

A shadow passed over her face.

"Do you know," she said, "I have a feeling that you care more for him
than for me?"

"Nonsense," he said, "he is my friend, you, you--immeasurably more."

"Are you still as intimate with him as when I first met you?"

"Not quite; of late a troubling something, like a thin veil, seems to
have passed between us. But he will come when I call him. He will not
fail me in my hour of need."

"When can he be here?"

"In two or three days."

"Meanwhile be very careful. Above all, lock your door at night."

"I will not only lock, but barricade it. I shall try with all my power
to elucidate this mystery without, however, exposing myself to needless
risks."

"I will go, then. Kiss me good-bye."

"May I not take you to the car?"

"You had better not."

At the door she turned back once more. "Write me every day, or call me
up on the telephone."

He straightened himself, as if to convince her of his strength. Yet when
at last the door had closed behind her, his courage forsook him for a
moment. And, if he had not been ashamed to appear a weakling before the
woman he loved, who knows if any power on earth could have kept him in
that house where from every corner a secret seemed to lurk!

There was a misgiving, too, in the woman's heart as she left the boy
behind,--a prey to the occult power that, seeking expression in multiple
activities, has made and unmade emperors, prophets and poets.

As she stepped into a street car she saw from afar, as in a vision, the
face of Reginald Clarke. It seemed very white and hungry. There was no
human kindness in it--only a threat and a sneer.

XXVI

For over an hour Ernest paced up and down his room, wildly excited by
Ethel's revelations. It required an immense amount of self-control for
him to pen the following lines to Jack: "I need you. Come."

After he had entrusted the letter to the hall-boy, a reaction set in and
he was able to consider the matter, if not with equanimity, at least
with a degree of calmness. The strangest thing to him was that he could
not bring himself to hate Reginald, of whose evil influence upon his
life he was no