gely nearer to each other, after that night, and the
peacefulness of their cruise to Bari remained uninterrupted. And once
clear of that port Durkin's nervousness somewhat lightened, for he had
figured out that they would be able to connect with one of the Cunard
liners at Trieste. From there, if only they escaped attention and
detection in the harbor, they would be turning homeward in two days.

One thing, and one thing only, lay between Frank and her husband: She
had not yet found courage to tell him of the loss of the Penfield
papers. And the more she thought of it, the more she dreaded it,
teased and mocked by the very irony of the situation, disquieted and
humiliated at the memory of her own pleadings for honesty while she
herself was so far astray from the paths she was pointing out.

That sacrifice of scrupulosity on the altar of expediency, trivial as
it was, was the heritage of her past life, she told herself. And she
felt, vaguely, that in some form or another it would be paid for, and
dearly paid for, as she had paid for everything.

It was only as they steamed into the harbor of Trieste, in the teeth of
a _bora_ and a high-running sea, that this woman who longed to be
altogether honest allowed herself any fleeting moment of self-pity.
For as she gazed up at the bald and sterile hills behind that clean and
wind-swept Austrian city, she remembered they had been thus denuded
that their timbers might make a foundation for Venice. She felt, in
that passing mood, that her own life had been denuded, that all its
softening and shrouding beauties had been cut out and carried away,
that from now on she was to be torn by winds and scorched by open
suns--while the best of her slept submerged, beyond the reach of her
unhappy hands.

But Durkin, at her side, through the driving spray and rain, pointed
out to her the huge rolling bulk and the red funnels of the Cunarder.

"Thank heaven!" he said, with a sigh of relief, "we'll be in time to
catch her!"

The _Laminian_ dropped anchor to the windward of the liner, and as dusk
settled down over the harbor Frank took a wordless pleasure in studying
the shadowy hulk which was to carry her back to America, to her old
life and her old associations. But she was wondering how she should
tell him of the loss of the Penfield securities. It was true that the
very crimes that should have bound them together were keeping them
apart!

Suddenly she ran to the companionway an