ndeed forgotten something. But he passed the open
drawing-room door; they saw him pass, jingling a bunch of keys, and never
so much as glancing in on the way. It was the dark-room door he opened.
Now he would find out everything! They heard a match struck, and saw the
faint light turn into a strong deep crimson glow. The door shut. The
children stood listening in the dark.

Running water, and the chink of glass; the tapping of a stoppered bottle;
the opening of the dark slide; these stages the younger photographer
followed as though he were again looking on. Then there was a long period
without a sound.

"He's developing now!" whispered Pocket, close to the folding-doors. He
caught the sound of laboured breathing on the other side. "There it
is--there it is--there it is!" cried the doctor's voice in mingled ecstasy
and mad excitement. A deep sigh announced the blackening of the plate at
the conclusion of the first process. A tap ran for a moment; interminable
minutes ensued. "It's gone! It's gone again!" cried the wild voice, with
a sob; "it's gone, gone, gone like all the rest!"

One listener waited for the passionate smashing of the negative as before;
but that did not happen again; and then he wondered if it was being put
straight into the rack with the others, if the damage to the locker had
been discovered at last. He never knew. The door opened. The red glow
showed for a moment in the passage, then went out. The door shut behind
Baumgartner, and again he passed the drawing-room, a bent figure, without
looking in. And the flagging step on the stairs bore no resemblance to
the one which had come hurrying down not many minutes before.

"I must go to him!" said Phillida in broken undertones, and her grief
communicated itself to the other young sympathetic soul, for all the base
fears he had to fight alone. Personal safety, little as she might think
of it, was the essence of her position as opposed to his; and he was of
the type that thinks of everything. She left him listening breathless in
the dark. And in the dark she found him when at length she returned to
report the doctor busy writing at his desk; but a pin's head of blue gas
glimmered where there had been none before, and a paper which had been
trodden underfoot now rustled in Pocket's hand.

"Does he know I'm here?" he asked.

"I don't think so. We never mentioned you. I believe he's forgotten your
existence altogether; he began by lo