e been wondering what you are waiting for.
You have been poking your head into the sand like a silly old ostrich,
but you haven't fooled me--or Polly, either, I think--for a single
minute. What's the obstacle?"

I was silent. Not even to so close a friend as Robert Barrett could I
give the real reason why my lips were sealed and must remain so. He
went on, after a time, good-naturedly ignoring my hesitancy.

"It was all right at first, of course; while we couldn't tell whether
we had a mine or only a costly muddle of litigation. But it's
different now. We are going to beat the Lawrenceburg people in the
end, and apart from that, if we should split up right here and now,
we've got an undivided surplus of--how much was it yesterday?--you've
got the records."

"A little under a million."

"Call it nine hundred thousand to divide among the three of us. Your
share of that would at least enable you and Polly to begin light
house-keeping in a five-room flat, don't you think?"

What could I say? How could I tell him that he was opening a door for
me that I could never enter; that by all the canons of decency and
honor I should never seek to enter? In the mingled emotions of the
moment there was a blind anger at the thought that he had unconsciously
made my hard case infinitely harder by showing me that my loyalty to
him was entirely needless.

"There are good reasons why I can't think of such a thing," I began;
but when I would have gone on the words froze in my throat. Since the
hour was nearly midnight, the mezzanine lounge was practically
deserted. But as I choked up and stopped, a couple, a man and a woman
who had come around from the other side of the gallery parlors, passed
us on their way to the elevator alcove.

I hardly saw the man of the pair. A second after they had passed I
could not have told whether he was black or white. That was because
the woman, fair, richly gowned, statuesquely handsome and apparently in
perfect health, was Agatha Geddis.

XVIII

"The Woman . . . Whose Hands are as Bands"

If I looked as stricken as I felt--and I doubtless did--Barrett had
ample reason for assuming that I had been suddenly taken sick.

"Why, Jimmie, old man!" he exclaimed in instant concern; and then he
took the half-burned cigar from between my fingers and threw it away,
at the same time sending the floor boy scurrying after a drink for me.

I couldn't touch the whiskey when it came; and I wa