ulness? For then, surely, he must have got her in his
power. He should have hung his head when she laughed, begged her to
forgive him for daring to lift his thoughts to her; and begged her as a
token of forgiveness to shake hands with him. Her hand once clasped
in his--

[Illustration: Barbara ... dashed into her dressing-room and locked the
door behind her.]

Well, he had made a fool of himself. Perhaps he had frightened her
utterly beyond the reach even of his long arm. Fear would carry her out
of the city, out of the State, out of the country, perhaps. To prevent
the least of these contingencies he must act swiftly and with
daring wisdom.

He passed into the studio, glanced upward at the bust of himself,
stopped, and looked about for something heavy with which to destroy it.
Later he would tell her that he had done so, and let that knowledge be
the beginning of her torment.

But the thing that he planned to destroy looked him in the eye, smiling.
The thing smiled in the full knowledge of good and evil, the fact that
it had chosen evil, the fact that it was lost forever. It was no
contagious smile, but a smile aloof and dreadful. So a man, impaled, may
smile, when agony has passed beyond the usual human passions--and even
so the legless man smiled upward at the smiling bust of himself. And he
found that he could not destroy the bust: for the act would have about
it too ominous a flavor of self-destruction.

He caught up his crutches, his little hand-organ, and hurried from the
studio. By now Barbara must be well on her way uptown. He entered a
public telephone station and gave the number of her house. He asked to
speak with Miss Marion O'Brien, and when after an interval he heard the
voice of Barbara's maid in his ear, he said: "She's been frightened. Let
me know what she's going to do as soon as you know. Don't use the house
'phone. Slip out to a pay station. I must know when she's going and
where, and if she says for how long." He hung up the receiver, and
hurried off.

An hour later Barbara's maid telephoned him the required news, but all
of it that mattered was that Barbara was not going out of town until the
next day. There was a whole afternoon and night in which to act.

The legless man sank at once into deep and swift thought. And ten
minutes later he had abandoned all idea of kidnapping Barbara for the
present. Certain dangers of so doing seemed insurmountable. He must
possess his soul in patience, a