or him to go. He said
gravely:

"I have been impatient, but you came so sharply into my empty
existence that I was upset. If you are ill you can cure yourself.
Never forget your mother's 'brave heart.' But there is something
objective, immediate, threatening you. Tell me what it is, Millie, and
together we will overcome and put it away from you for ever."

She gazed panic-stricken into the empty gloom below. "No! no!" she
exclaimed, rising. "You don't know. I won't drag you down. You must go
away at once, tonight, even in the storm."

"What is it?" he demanded.

She stood rigidly erect with her eyes shut and hands clasped at her
sides. Then she slid down upon the box, lifting to him a white mask of
fright.

"It's Nicholas," she said, hardly above her breath.

A sudden relief swept over John Woolfolk. In his mind he dismissed as
negligible the heavy man fumbling beneath his soiled apron. He
wondered how the other could have got such a grip on Millie Stope's
imagination.

The mystery that had enveloped her was fast disappearing, leaving them
without an obstacle to the happiness he proposed. Woolfolk said
curtly:

"Has Nicholas been annoying you?"

She shivered, with clasped straining hands.

"He says he's crazy about me," she told him in a shuddering voice that
contracted his heart. "He says that I must--must marry him, or----"
Her period trailed abruptly out to silence.

Woolfolk grew animated with determination, an immediate purpose.

"Where would Nicholas be at this hour?" he asked.

She rose hastily, clinging to his arm. "You mustn't," she exclaimed,
yet not loudly. "You don't know! He is watching--something frightful
would happen."

"Nothing 'frightful,'" he returned tolerantly, preparing to descend.
"Only unfortunate for Nicholas."

"You mustn't," she repeated desperately, her sheer weight hanging from
her hands clasped about his neck. "Nicholas is not--not human. There's
something funny about him. I don't mean funny, I----"

He unclasped her fingers and quietly forced her back to the seat on
the box. Then he took a place at her side.

"Now," he asked reasonably, "what is this about Nicholas?"

She glanced down into the desolate cavern of the store; the ghostly
remnant of cotton goods fluttered in a draft like a torn and grimy
cobweb; the lower floor was palpably bare.

"He came in April," she commenced in a voice without any life. "The
woman we had had for years was dead; and when Nicholas