"Share with you," I corrected. "I've told you a couple of times already
that I'll help you to it, but that I don't intend to take a penny of the
money. So, when you're figuring it out, remember it's halves, not
thirds, you're working on."

"If it was anybody else but me you'd take it quickly enough," she said
accusingly.

"Maybe I would and again maybe I wouldn't," I said with a smile.

"Oh, Jim, I hate you!" she cried in a sudden blaze of temper.

"I'm sorry," I said easily. "It doesn't take much to make you hate
seemingly."

She turned and faced me with one of those swift changes of front that
made her so hard to deal with. The white-hot anger had gone as suddenly
as it had come, and in its place there was nothing but hopelessness. She
looked so weary and so miserable that for the moment I was tempted to
take her in my arms and tell her that the past did not matter any more
than did the future. But the memory of the words with which she had
driven me out of her life that summer's evening long ago lashed me like
a whip, and in an instant I had hardened my heart.

"Why do you make it so hard for me, Jim?" she moaned. "If only you would
help me a little."

"I'm helping you all I can," I said with a touch of cynicism in my
voice. "You can count on me until the adventure's finished."

"You know I don't mean that," she said weakly.

"There's nothing else you can mean," I answered stubbornly.

For the space of a heart-beat we stood facing each other. I saw that she
was on the verge of a breakdown, and I knew that my own resolution was
failing. After all, what need was there for me to be so brutal? She had
suffered more than enough for the idle words spoken in haste all those
years ago. There is no knowing what might have happened had not Fate
intervened. But just as things had reached breaking-strain the door-bell
rang. The prosaic sound brought us back instantly to earth, and a
dramatic situation, tense with possibilities, became in a moment
common-place.

"There's the door-bell," Moira said calmly. "I wonder who it can be."

"Some visitor or other," I remarked.

"What visitor could it be?" she asked. "I know of no one who'd have
business here."

I knew of one at least, but I did not put my thoughts into words.
Instead I remarked, "Quite possibly it's some house-hunter."

We heard the maid's steps go up the hall past us. There was a whispered
colloquy at the door, and then, quite distinctly, the maid's vo