expense will be
borne by the Party, just as the Party paid your fine. It needs you and
must have you; and were the cost ten times as great, would bear it to
get you back! Remember, Gabriel, the Party is far larger than when you
were buried alive in a cell. Even though in some ways outlawed and
suppressed, its potential power is tremendous. All it needs is the
electric spark to cause the world-shaking explosion. All that keeps us
from power now is the Iron Heel--that, and the clutch of the Air Trust
already crushing and mangling us!

"Go, now," she concluded. "Go, and rest a while, and wait. All shall be
well. But first, you must get back your strength completely, and find
yourself, and take your place again in the ranks of the great,
subterranean army!"

"And shall I see you soon, again?" he asked, his voice trembling just a
little as their hands clasped once more, and once more parted.

"You will see me soon," she answered.

"Where?"

"In a safe place, where we can plan, and work, and organize for the
final blow! Now, you shall know no more. Good-bye!"

One last look each gave the other. Their eyes met, more caressingly than
many a kiss; and, turning, Gabriel took his way, alone, toward
Desplaines Street.

At the exit of the park, he looked around.

There Catherine sat, on the bench. But, seemingly quite oblivious to
everything, she was now reading a little book. Though he lingered a
moment, hoping to get some signal from her, she never stirred or looked
up from the page.

Sighing, with a strange feeling of sudden loneliness and a vast, empty
yearning in his heart, Gabriel continued on his way, toward what? He
knew not.

The detective on the other side of the park, no longer sat there.
Somehow, somewhere, he had disappeared.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

IN THE REFUGE.

Far on the western slopes of Clingman Dome in the great Smoky Mountains
of North Carolina, a broad, low-built bungalow stood facing the setting
sun. Vast stretches of pine forest shut it off from civilization and the
prying activities of Plutocracy. The nearest settlement was Ravens,
twenty miles away to eastward, across inaccessible ridges and ravines.
Running far to southward, the railway left this wilderness untouched.
High overhead, an eagle soared among the "thunder-heads" that presaged a
storm up Sevier Pass. And, red through the haze to westward, the great
huge sunball slid down the heavens toward the tumbled, jagged mass of
peaks