ATHA."

My appetite for dinner had gone glimmering when I sat at the most
secluded table the cafe afforded and went through the motions of
eating. Not for a single instant did I mistake the purport of Agatha
Geddis's note. It was not a friendly invitation; it was a veiled
command. If it should be disobeyed, I made sure that not all the money
in the Little Clean-Up's treasury could save me from going back to the
home State as a recaptured felon.

Eight o'clock found me descending from a cab at the door of a rather
dissipated looking mansion in the northern suburb. A servant admitted
me, but I had to wait alone for a quarter of an hour or more in the
stuffy and rather tawdry luxury of a great drawing-room. After a time
I realized that Agatha was making me wait purposely in a refinement of
cruelty, knowing well what torments I must be enduring.

When the suspense ended and she came into the room I saw at a glance
that she was the same woman as of old; beautiful, alluring, but
infinitely more sophisticated. Her charm now, as in girlhood, was
chiefly the charm of physical perfection; but it was not entirely
without its appeal when she made me sit beside her on the heavily
carved mock-antique sofa.

"I didn't know certainly whether you would come or not," was the way
she began on me, and if the tone was conventional I knew well enough
what lay beneath it. "Old times are old times, but----"

She was merely playing with me as a cat plays with a mouse, but I could
neither fight nor run until she gave me an opening.

"Of course you knew I would come; why shouldn't I?" I asked, striving
for some outward appearance of self-possession.

"I'm sure I don't think of any reason, if you don't," she countered.
"Did you know I was in Denver?"

"Not in Denver, no. But I heard, some time ago, that you had come to
Colorado for your health."

"It seems absolutely ridiculous, doesn't it?--to look at me now. But
really, I was very ill three years ago; and even now I can't go back
home and stay for any length of time. You haven't been back, have you,
since your--since you----"

"No; I haven't been back."

She was rolling her filmy little lace handkerchief into a shapeless
ball, and if I hadn't known her so well I might have fancied she was
embarrassed.

"I can't endure to think of that dreadful time four years ago--it is
four years, isn't it?" she sighed; then with a swift glance of the
man-melting eyes: "You hate me s