peaceably. She
wondered a little how Jerry had approached it, and told herself with a
beating heart that she would have to take her own line of action.

Nevertheless, for a full week she did nothing, and at the end of that
week the flutter in the Winhalla Railway shares had subsided completely,
and all Jerry's high hopes were dead. From day to day he had tried to
console himself and her with the reflection that a speculation of that
sort was bound to fluctuate, but, in the end, when the shares went down
to zero, he was forced to own that he had been too sanguine. It had been
but the last flicker before extinction. The capitalist had evidently
thought better of risking his money on such a venture.

"And I was a gaping, weak-kneed idiot not to sell for what I could get!"
he told his sister. "But it's just our luck. I might have known nothing
decent could ever happen to us!"

It was on that evening, when the outlook was at its blackest, that
Violet wrote at last, without consulting Jerry, to the man in whose
hands lay her freedom.

It was a short epistle, and humbly worded, for she realised that this,
at least, was his due.

"I want you," she wrote, "to forgive me, if you can, for the wrong I
have done you, and to set me free. I accepted you upon impulse, I am
ashamed to say, for the sake of your money. But the shame would be even
greater if I did not tell you so. I do not know what view you will take,
but my own is that, in releasing me, you will not lose anything that is
worth having."

The answer to this appeal came the next day by hand:

"May I see you alone at your flat at five o'clock?"

She had not expected it, and she felt for an instant as if a master hand
had touched her, sending the blood tingling through her veins like fire.
She sent a reply in the affirmative; and then set herself to face the
longest day she had ever lived through.

She sat alone during the afternoon, striving desperately to nerve
herself for the ordeal. But strive as she might, the fact remained that
she was horribly, painfully frightened. There was something about this
man which it seemed futile to resist, something that dominated her,
something against which it hurt her to fight.

She heard his ring punctually upon the stroke of five, and she went
herself to answer it.

He greeted her with his usual serenity of manner.

"All alone?" he asked, as he followed her into the little drawing-room
in which he had proposed to her so s