Never must I feel myself called upon to do
this kind of thing again. Besides, I have never got over the Zabriskie
tragedy. It haunts me continually. Something new may help to put it out
of my head. I feel guilty. I was responsible--"

"No, Puss. I will not have it that you were responsible. Some such end
was bound to follow a complication like that. Sooner or later he would
have been driven to shoot himself--"

"But not her."

"No, not her. But do you think she would have given those few minutes of
perfect understanding with her blind husband for a few years more of
miserable life?"

Violet made no answer; she was too absorbed in her surprise. Was this
Arthur? Had a few weeks' work and a close connection with the really
serious things of life made this change in him? Her face beamed at the
thought, which seeing, but not understanding what underlay this evidence
of joy, he bent and kissed her, saying with some of his old nonchalance:

"Forget it, Violet; only don't let anyone or anything lead you to
interest yourself in another affair of the kind. If you do, I shall have
to consult a certain friend of yours as to the best way of stopping this
folly. I mention no names. Oh! you need not look so frightened. Only
behave; that's all."

"He's right," she acknowledged to herself, as he sauntered away;
"altogether right."

Yet because she wanted the extra money--

* * * * *

The scene invited alarm,--that is, for so young a girl as Violet,
surveying it from an automobile some time after the stroke of midnight.
An unknown house at the end of a heavily shaded walk, in the open
doorway of which could be seen the silhouette of a woman's form leaning
eagerly forward with arms outstretched in an appeal for help! It
vanished while she looked, but the effect remained, holding her to her
seat for one startled moment. This seemed strange, for she had
anticipated adventure. One is not summoned from a private ball to ride a
dozen miles into the country on an errand of investigation, without some
expectation of encountering the mysterious and the tragic. But Violet
Strange, for all her many experiences, was of a most susceptible nature,
and for the instant in which that door stood open, with only the memory
of that expectant figure to disturb the faintly lit vista of the hall
beyond, she felt that grip upon the throat which comes from an
indefinable fear which no words can explain and no plummet so