this. He said the police
were baffled--that he believed now that it could never be traced."

"Thank God!" Katherine said, slowly and distinctly, and North stared in
astonishment.

"What?" His tone was incredulous.

"Oh; don't take me so seriously," said the girl, impatiently. "It's only
that I can't sympathize with your multimillionaire, who loses a little
of his heaps of money, against some poor soul to whom that little may
mean life or death--life or death, maybe, for his nearest and dearest.
Mr. Litterny has had a small loss, which he won't feel in a year from
now. The thief, the rascal, the scoundrel, as you call him so fluently,
has escaped for now, perhaps, with his ill-gotten gains, but he is a
hunted thing, living with a black terror of being found out--a terror
which clutches him when he prays and when he dances. It's the thief I'm
sorry for--I'm sorry for him--I'm sorry for him." Her voice was agitated
and uneven beyond what seemed reasonable.

"'The way of the transgressor is hard,'" Norman North said, slowly, and
looked across the shifting sand-stretch to the inevitable sea, and
spoke the words pitilessly, as if an inevitable law spoke through him.

They cut into the girl's soul. A quick gasp of pain broke from her, and
the man turned and saw her face and sprang to his feet.

"Come," he said,--"come home," and held out his hands.

She let him take hers, and he lifted her lightly, and did not let her
hands go. For a second they stood, and into the silence a deep boom of
the water against the beach thundered and died away. He drew the hands
slowly toward him till he held them against him. There seemed not to be
any need for words.

Half an hour later, as they walked back through the sweet loneliness of
Springfield Avenue, North said: "You've forgotten something. You've
forgotten that this is the day you were to tell me why you had the bad
manners to laugh at me before you knew me. Now that we are engaged it's
your duty to tell me if I'm ridiculous."

There was none of the responsive, soft laughter he expected. "We're not
engaged--we can't be engaged," she threw back, impetuously, and as he
looked at her there was suffering in her face.

"What do you mean? You told me you loved me." His voice was full of its
curious mixture of gentleness and sternness, and she shrank visibly from
the sternness.

"Don't be hard on me," she begged, like a frightened child, and he
caught her hand with a quick exclama