up to his friend and took her hand.

"You would do it--you would do it!"

She looked at him, smiling, but her hand shook.

"Good-by," he said, kissing it.

"Good-by? You are going--?"

"To get my letter."

"Your letter? The letter won't matter, if you will only do what I ask."

He returned her gaze. "I might, I suppose, without being out of
character. Only, don't you see that if your plan helped me it could
only harm her?"

"Harm _her?_"

"To sacrifice you wouldn't make me different. I shall go on being what
I have always been--sifting and sorting, as she calls it. Do you want
my punishment to fall on _her?_"

She looked at him long and deeply. "Ah, if I had to choose between
you--!"

"You would let her take her chance? But I can't, you see. I must take
my punishment alone."

She drew her hand away, sighing. "Oh, there will be no punishment for
either of you."

"For either of us? There will be the reading of her letter for me."

She shook her head with a slight laugh. "There will be no letter."

Thursdale faced about from the threshold with fresh life in his look.
"No letter? You don't mean--"

"I mean that she's been with you since I saw her--she's seen you and
heard your voice. If there _is_ a letter, she has recalled it--from the
first station, by telegraph."

He turned back to the door, forcing an answer to her smile. "But in the
mean while I shall have read it," he said.

The door closed on him, and she hid her eyes from the dreadful
emptiness of the room.

THE QUICKSAND

I

AS Mrs. Quentin's victoria, driving homeward, turned from the Park into
Fifth Avenue, she divined her son's tall figure walking ahead of her in
the twilight. His long stride covered the ground more rapidly than
usual, and she had a premonition that, if he were going home at that
hour, it was because he wanted to see her.

Mrs. Quentin, though not a fanciful woman, was sometimes aware of a
sixth sense enabling her to detect the faintest vibrations of her son's
impulses. She was too shrewd to fancy herself the one mother in
possession of this faculty, but she permitted herself to think that few
could exercise it more discreetly. If she could not help overhearing
Alan's thoughts, she had the courage to keep her discoveries to
herself, the tact to take for granted nothing that lay below the
surface of their spoken intercourse: she knew that most people would
rather have their letters read than their thoughts.