ed to his desk and touched a bell, bringing his secretary
instantly.

"Left hand side of the vault, box marked 'Private 3,'" he said. Then he
resumed:

"If they could come back they would come, Bulger. Especially those we
loved. Not to let us see them, you understand, but to assure us it is
all right--that we'll live again. That's what I want--proof--I can't
take it on faith." His voice lowered. "Thirty years!" he whispered.
"What's thirty years?"

The secretary knocked, entered, set a small, steel box on the glass top
of the desk. Norcross dismissed him with a gesture, drew out his keys,
opened the box. It distilled a faint scent of old roses and old papers.
Norcross looked within for a moment, as though turning the scent into
memories, before he took out a locket. He opened it, hesitated, and
then extended it to Bulger. It enclosed an exquisite miniature--a young
woman, blonde, pretty in a blue-eyed, innocent way, but characterless,
too--a face upon which life had left nothing, so that even the great
painter who made the miniature from a photograph had illuminated it
only with technical skill.

"Don't tell me what you think of her," Norcross said quietly; "I prefer
to keep my own ideas. It was when I was a young freight clerk. She
taught school up there. We were--well, the ring's in the box, too. They
took it off her finger when they buried her. That's why--" to put the
brake on his rapidly running sentiment, he ventured one of his rare
pleasantries at this point--"that's why I'm still a stock newspaper
feature as one of the great matches for ambitious society girls."

Bulger, listening, was observing also. Within the front cover of the
case were two sets of initials in old English letters--"R.H.N." and
"H.W." His mind, a little confused by its wanderings in strange fields,
tried idly to match "H.W." with names. Suddenly he felt the necessity
of expressing sympathy.

"Poor--" he began, but Norcross, by a swift outward gesture of the
hand, stopped and saved him.

[Illustration: "IT WASN'T THE MONEY; IT WAS THE GAME--"]

"Well, I got in after that," Norcross went on, "and I drove 'em! It
wasn't the money; it was the game. She'd have had the spending of
_that_. And it isn't just to see her--it's to know if she is still
waiting--and if we'll make up for thirty years--out there."

As Bulger handed back the locket, the secretary knocked again. Norcross
started; something seemed to snap into place; he was again th