with me?"

For a moment Loraine hesitated, then she slowly nodded her head.

Carlos de Metuan arrived promptly that evening.

Loraine had made her fight and regarded herself as a defeated martyr.
The hour and a half before his coming she had not devoted to tears, but
to beautifying herself. She met him radiant, and from her eyes and lips
all the disfigurement of distress was banished. She laughed and chatted
throughout dinner, and over the coffee, leaning forward a little, she
asked, "Where do you mean to take me from here?"

"To a comedy perhaps, wherever you like."

There was a brief pause, then she looked up and put a second question.
She put it with the best nonchalance that she could assume. It did not
sound like unconditional surrender.

"And after that?"

Carlos de Metuan lighted a cigarette.

"I have leased for you a very good apartment not far from the Champs
Elysees. I think you will find it comfortable."

For an instant the woman's eyes hardened.

"You appear to have taken matters rather much for granted, Carlos."

He shook his head and smiled.

"I merely hoped," he assured her.

CHAPTER XXIX

Possibly some day a historian versed in the intricacies of high--and
low--finance will record in detail, comprehensible and convincing to
those who thirst for statistical minutiae, the last chapters of Hamilton
Burton's history. Here it will only be set baldly down that the weeks,
for him, went galloping toward and over the brink of things--until he
found his affairs still reckoned in many millions, but all in the
millions of liabilities.

He was pointed out derisively in those expensive hotels where once every
head had bowed obsequiously at his coming. Then one night he went to his
office, carrying a leather portfolio in his hand. He still walked with
his head up and met the eye of every man who cared to gaze into his own.
About his neck was turned up the collar of a sable-lined overcoat--relic
of his days of splendor. As he walked down-town he met no one who knew
him, and this suited his plans. Lower Broadway after nightfall is as
murky and silent as upper Broadway is aflare and noisy. The steep
buildings are like cemetery shafts, save where belated clerks work over
their books and night watchmen guard their posts.

Burton's offices, still his under a long-term lease, were denuded of
furniture and accessories--since the sheriff had already begun his
confiscations here.

But tonight Hamilt