her little hands warm in his, her masked
face upturned. And, as he merely stared at her:

"What is the matter, Jack?" she breathed. "Why do you look at me so
steadily?"

He ought to have let her go then; he hesitated, wondering which Jack she
supposed him to be; and before he realised it her arms were on his
shoulders, her mouth nearer to his.

"Jack, you frighten me! What is it?"

"N-nothing," he continued to stammer.

"Yes, there is. Does your--your wife suspect--anything----"

"No, she doesn't," said Duane grimly, trying to free himself without
seeming to. "I've got an appointment----"

But the girl said piteously: "It isn't--Geraldine, is it?"

"_What_!"

"You--you admitted that she attracted you--for a little while.... Oh, I
_did_ forgive you, Jack; truly I did with all my miserable heart! I was
so fearfully unhappy--I would have done anything." ... Her face flushed
scarlet. "And I--did.... But you do love me, don't you?" And the next
moment her lips were on his with a sob.

Duane reached back and quietly unclasped her fingers. Then very gently
he forced her to a seat on a great fallen log. Still looking up at him,
droopingly pathetic in contrast to her gay debut with him, she naively
slipped up the mask over her forehead and passed her hand across her
pretty blue eyes. Sylvia Quest!

The sinister significance of her attitude flashed over him, all doubt
vanished, all the comedy of their encounter was gone in an instant. Over
him swept a startled sequence of emotions--bitter contempt for Dysart,
scorn of the wretchedly equivocal situation and of the society that bred
it, a miserable desire to spare her, vexation at himself for what he had
unwittingly stumbled upon. The last thought persisted, dominated;
succeeded by a disgusted determination that she must be spared the shame
and terror of what she had inadvertently revealed; that she must never
know she had not been speaking to Dysart himself.

"If I tell you that all is well--and if I tell you no more than that,"
he whispered, "will you trust me?"

"Have I not done so, Jack?"

The tragedy in her lifted eyes turned him cold with fury.

"Then wait here until I return," he said. "Promise."

"I promise," she sighed, "but I don't understand. I'm a--a little
frightened, dear. But I--believe you."

He swung on his heel and made toward the lights once more, and a moment
later the man he sought passed within a few feet of him, and Duane knew
him by his