n. I'll get you clear;
I'll save you, Dan."

"Flood! Oh, my God, Flood!" The voice was broken.

"You've got to stay here, and you're to remember not to get the funk,
even if I don't come before midnight. I'll be here then, if I'm alive.
If you don't keep your word--but, there, you will." Both hands gripped
the graceful shoulders of the miscreant like a vice.

"So help me, Flood," was the frightened, whispered reply, "I'll make it
up to you somehow, some day. I'll pay you back."

Rawley caught up his cap from the table. "Steady--steady. Don't go at
a fence till you're sure of your seat, Dan," he said. Then with a long
look at the portrait on the wall, and an exclamation which the other did
not hear, he left the room with a set, determined face.

......................

"Who told you? What brought you, Flood?" the girl asked, her chin in her
long, white hands, her head turned from the easel to him, a book in
her lap, the sun breaking through the leaves upon her hat, touching the
Titian hair with splendour.

"Fate brought me, and didn't tell me," he answered, with a whimsical
quirk of the mouth, and his trouble lurking behind the sea-deep eyes.

"Wouldn't you have come if you knew I was here?" she urged archly.

"Not for two thousand dollars," he answered, the look of trouble
deepening in his eyes, but his lips were smiling. He had a quaint sense
of humour, and at his last gasp would have noted the ridiculous thing.
And surely it was a droll malignity of Fate to bring him here to her
whom, in this moment of all moments in his life, he wished far away.
Fate meant to try him to the uttermost. This hurdle of trial was high
indeed.

"Two thousand dollars--nothing less?" she inquired gaily. "You are too
specific for a real lover."

"Fate fixed the amount," he added drily. "Fate--you talk so much of
Fate," she replied gravely, and her eyes looked into the distance. "You
make me think of it too, and I don't want to do so. I don't want to feel
helpless, to be the child of Accident and Destiny."

"Oh, you get the same thing in the 'fore-ordination' that old Minister
M'Gregor preaches every Sunday. 'Be elect or be damned,' he says to us
all. Names aren't important; but, anyhow, it was Fate that led me here."

"Are you sure it wasn't me?" she asked softly. "Are you sure I wasn't
calling you, and you had to come?"

"Well, it was en route, anyhow; and you are always calling, if I must
tell you," he laughed. Sud