r at hand. And he went into a slow and
painful calculation. Fifty dollars at least it had cost. A hundred
stenographers--that would be five thousand dollars for watches.

Suddenly he knew that Anna had lied to him. One of two things, then:
either she had spent money for it, unknown to him, or some one had given
it to her. There was, in his mind, not much difference in degree between
the two alternatives. Both were crimes of the first magnitude.

He picked the watch up between his broad thumb and forefinger, and then,
his face a cold and dreadful mask, he mounted the stairs.

CHAPTER XXVII

Clayton Spencer was facing with characteristic honesty a situation that
he felt was both hopeless and shameful.

He was hopelessly in love with Audrey. He knew now that he had known it
for a long time. Here was no slender sentiment, no thin romance. With
every fiber of him, heart and soul and body, he loved her and wanted
her. There was no madness about it, save the fact itself, which was
mad enough. It was not the single attraction of passion, although he
recognized that element as fundamental in it. It was the craving of a
strong man who had at last found his woman.

He knew that, as certainly as he knew anything. He did not even question
that she cared for him. It was as though they both had passed through
the doubting period without knowing it, and had arrived together at the
same point, the crying need of each other.

He rather thought, looking back, that Audrey had known it sooner than he
had. She had certainly known the night she learned of Chris's death.
His terror when she fainted, the very way he had put her out of his arms
when she opened her eyes--those had surely told her. Yet, had Chris's
cynical spirit been watching, there had been nothing, even then.

There was, between them, nothing now. He had given way to the people who
flocked to her with sympathy, had called her up now and then, had sent
her a few books, some flowers. But the hopelessness of the situation
held him away from her. Once or twice, at first, he had called her on
the telephone and had waited, almost trembling, for her voice over the
wire, only to ask her finally, in a voice chilled with repression, how
she was feeling, or to offer a car for her to ride in the park. And her
replies were equally perfunctory. She was well. She was still studying,
but it was going badly. She was too stupid to learn all those pot-hooks.

Once she had said: