adventure. And first, before he
rushed for escape, there was Aimee to find.

Yet for all the mad hazard of the situation he was elated with life.
He felt as if he had never fully lived until now, when every breath
was informed with the sharp prescience of danger. He was at once
cool and exultant, wary yet reckless, with the joyous recklessness
of utter desperation.

With cat-like care he surveyed the drawing-room; it appeared
deserted but as he watched his tense nerves could see the shadows
forming, taking furtive, crouching shape--and then dissolving
harmlessly into a rug, a chair, or a stirring drapery. His eyes
grown used to the dimness he identified the mantle upon the floor in
which he had come and which he had extended to Aimee in that brief
moment of fatuous triumph, and beyond it, across a chair, was the
portiere which the black had torn down from the doorway to wrap
about Ryder's helpless form as he had carried him down to living
death.

That mantle, he thought, might yet be useful, and he stole forward
and recovered it, but, as he straightened, another shadow darted out
from the boudoir door and silhouetted for an instant against the
lighted, room he saw a figure in a long, swinging military cloak.

Discovery was inevitable and Ryder made a swift plunge to take the
cloaked figure by surprise, but even as one hand shot out and
gripped the throat while the other held his threatening iron aloft,
his clutch relaxed, his arm fell nervelessly at his side.

For from the figure had come the broken gasp of a soft voice, and
the face upturned to his was a pale oval under dark, disordered
hair.

"Aimee!" he breathed in exultant, still half-incredulous joy.
"Aimee!... Did I hurt you--?"

"Oh, no, no!" came Aimee's shaken voice. "Oh, you are safe!"

He felt her trembling in his clasp and he swept her close to him.
For one breathless instant they clung together, in a sharp,
passionate gladness which blurred every sense of dread or danger.
They were safe--they were together--and for the moment it was
enough. Every obstacle was surmounted, every terror conquered.

They clung, obliviously, like children, her pale face against his
shoulder, her hair brushing his lips, her wild heartbeats throbbing
against his own.

Then the girl, remembering, lifted her head.

"Quick--we must go," she whispered. "For there I made a fire--"

He followed her frightened, backward glance at the boudoir door and
suddenly saw its cra