"Come back here!" shouted Marston.

Mayo looked behind.

The magnate stood with finger on the push-button. "Come back, I say!"

"I protest. This is none of my business. I am here for something else
than to listen to your daughter's private affairs."

"You come back!" commanded the father in low tones of menace, "or I'll
have you held for the United States marshals the minute you step foot
outside that door."

Raging within himself at the tactics of this incomprehensible girl,
Captain Mayo walked slowly to the desk; it occurred to him that it was
as hard to get out of Julius Marston's office as it was to get in.

"I would never have come in here if I had dreamed that your daughter
would tell you what she has. I am in a false position. I insist that you
allow me to leave."

"You'll leave when I get to the bottom of this thing! Now, Alma, what
new craziness is all this?"

"I am not resenting the word you apply to it," she replied, facing him
resolutely. "I did it--and I don't know why I did it!"

"Did what?"

"I ran away. I did it because the girls dared me to do it. I promised a
man I would marry him."

"This man, eh?"

"No. I have told you this is not the man."

"Well, who, then?" Incredulity was mingled with her father's wrath.

"One of your trusted young gentlemen. Mr. Ralph Bradish."

"Where did you meet him?"

"At the dances."

"Not at our house?"

"I do not know how you are so sure of that, father," she returned, a
touch of rather wistful reproach in her tones. "You have left me
alone in that house ever since mother went away. But it was not at our
house--it was in the public ball-rooms."

"Hell set to music!" he rasped. "I ought to have realized that you are
still an infant!"

"No; I am a woman to-day. I lived a whole lifetime in one night on the
ocean. I know you have reason to be ashamed of me. But I'll never give
you cause for shame again. Now what are you going to say to this man who
saved my life--who did more than that? He saved me from myself!"

Marston narrowed his eyes and scrutinized Mayo. "I don't understand this
thing yet! The story doesn't ring right." He turned on his daughter.
"How did this man save your life? Be quick and be short!"

He interrupted her in the middle of her eager recital. He had been
scowling while she talked, staring into vacancy in meditation.

"A story-book tale!" he declared, impatiently, and yet there was a shade
of insincerity in that impatience