d herself a hundred times to answer this question, but
now that it was put she found it no easier to decide on a reply; to know
what answer would best save her from the consequences of the stupid
error into which her hatred had led her.

If she said that she had lost it and subsequent events had driven it
from her mind, he would duplicate the message. If she said she had
delivered it and her falsehood was discovered, her position was rendered
more dangerous, ten-fold. She decided on the answer which placed
discovery a little farther off.

"Sure, she got it; I gave it to her that afternoon."

Her assurance closed the incident so far as the telegraph operator was
concerned; it was the real beginning of it to Doctor Harpe, whose
intelligence enabled her to realize to the utmost the position in which
she now had irrevocably placed herself. She turned abruptly and walked
to her office with a nervous rapidity totally unlike her usual swagger.

When the door was closed behind her she paced the floor with excited
strides. It was useless to attempt to hide from herself the fact that
she was horribly, cravenly afraid of Ogden Van Lennop; for she
recognized beneath his calm exterior a quality which inspired fear. She
was afraid of him as an individual, afraid of his money and the power of
his influence if he chose to use them, for Dr. Harpe had brains enough,
worldly wisdom enough, to know that he was beyond her reach.

In Crowheart, she believed that through her strong personality and the
support of Andy P. Symes she could accomplish nearly anything she
undertook; but she knew that in the great world outside where she had
discovered Van Lennop was a factor, she would be only an eccentric
female doctor, amusing perhaps, mildly interesting, even, but entirely
inconsequential.

Her thoughts became a chaotic jam of incoherent explanations as she
thought of an accounting to Van Lennop should he return, and again she
raged at herself for the insane impulse which had led her to boast of a
farewell letter to her. The sleepless hours in which she had gone over
and over the situation with every solution growing more preposterous
than the last, had been telling upon the nerves which never had quite
recovered from the shock and the incidents which followed Alice Freoff's
death. The slightest excitement seemed to set them jangling of late.

They were twitching now; her eyelids, her shoulders, her mouth seemed
never in repose when she w