drew her to him, pillowed her head
on his shoulder.

"Don't cry, Cynthia," he whispered earnestly. "It's heart-breaking work,
dear, and it doesn't help. There! Let me hold you till you feel better.
You can't refuse comfort from an old friend like me."

She yielded to him mutely for a little, till her grief had somewhat
spent itself. Then, with a little quivering smile, she lifted her head
and looked him straight in the face.

"Thank you, Jack," she said. "You--you've done me good. But it's not
good for you, is it? I've made you quite damp. You don't think you'll
catch cold?"--dabbing at his shoulder with her handkerchief.

He took her hand and stayed it.

"There is nothing in this world," he said gravely "that I would so
gladly do as help you, Cynthia. Will you believe this, and treat me from
this stand-point only?"

She turned back to the fire, but she left her hand in his.

"My dear," she said, in an odd little choked voice, "it's just like you
to say so, and I guess I sha'n't forget it. Well, well! There's my
romance in a nutshell. He didn't care a fig for me till just the last.
He cared then, but it was too late to come to anything. They shipped him
back again you know, and he was sentenced to fifteen years' penal
servitude. He's done nearly twelve, and he's coming out next month on
ticket-of-leave."

"Oh, Cynthia!"

Babbacombe bent his head suddenly upon her hand, and sat tense and
silent.

"I know," she said--"I know. It sounds simply monstrous, put into bald
words. I sometimes wonder myself if it can possibly be true--if I,
Cynthia Mortimer, can really be such a fool. But I can't possibly tell
for certain till I see him again. I must see him again somehow. I've
waited all these years--all these years."

Babbacombe groaned.

"And suppose, when you've seen him, you still care?"

She shook her head.

"What then, Jack? I don't know; I don't know."

He pulled himself together, and sat up.

"Do you know where he is?"

"Yes. He is at Barren Hill. He has been there for five years now. My
solicitor knows that I take an interest in him. He calls it
philanthropy." Cynthia smiled faintly into the fire. "I was one of the
people he swindled," she said. "But he paid me back."

She rose and went across the room to a bureau in a corner. She unlocked
a drawer, and took something from it. Returning, she laid a packet of
notes in Babbacombe's hands.

"I could never part with them," she said. "He gave them