of your
coming with us. You can't be running into danger."

"Can't I just," she said with an assertive toss of her head, "and,
whether I can or not, I'm going," she finished.

I looked at Cumshaw. I could not tell from his expression whether he was
pleased or sorry. His face was as devoid of emotion as that of a china
doll.

"What do you think about it?" I asked him straight out.

He glanced at me in his turn with a curious baffling light in his dark
eyes, and I felt as if he had stripped my soul bare of all pretences and
was reading my thoughts in all their nakedness.

"I should think," he said at length with an air of absolute
impartiality, "that Miss Drummond is the mistress of her own actions and
neither you nor I have any right to dictate what she is to do."

"Have it your own way then," I said, with difficulty suppressing my
rising anger. "But if anything goes wrong remember that I warned you
beforehand."

"I'll remember that," Moira said, and she favored Cumshaw with a little
smile of gratitude. She never smiled at me like that, not even in those
far-away days when we were all the world to each other or thought we
were. Which in the end amounts to much the same thing.

"Well, if you don't mind," said Cumshaw, breaking an awkward silence,
"I'll go home now and think matters over. And then to-morrow we'll
decide what to do."

"Home?" I echoed. "I thought----" And then I stopped.

"I'm staying in town," he said with a smile. "That's what I meant when I
said home."

"In that case," I said, "you'll be handy whenever we want you. You'd
better leave your address in case we want you in a hurry."

He scribbled his address--a leading city hotel--on a blank card and
handed it to me. I glanced at it and then thrust it into my pocket. When
I looked up again he was holding Moira's hand in his, just a trifle
longer than convention demanded I thought, and saying something to her
that I did not catch. She smiled in return, a dazzling smile, and said
quite distinctly, "Please call whenever you feel inclined. There is no
need for us to stand on ceremony with each other now we're partners."

I saw him to the door. At the threshold he turned and spoke with one
foot on the step and the other on the ground, taking up that attitude of
unaffected ease that gives an air of friendliness to even the most
formal conversation.

"I'm rather pleased I met you, Carstairs," he said. "In one way and
another I've heard a lot about