on, "that they procured the minister's address
from the elevator man at your dwelling."

"Ah, that Rafferty! Wait till I see him," broke in Marcelle.

"Please do not scarify Rafferty, if that is his name. I am much more
to be blamed than he, because I assured your mistress that the Earl and
Count Vassilan were safe on board the _Switzerland_ till the morning.
I see now that they telegraphed for a tug, and it is best to assume
that they have been kept informed by wireless of nearly every move in
the game. . . . You agree with me, I suppose, Lady Hermione, that your
return to 1000 59th Street is out of the question?"

"It is, if this mock marriage is to serve any real purpose," she said.

"But pray remember that it is not a mock marriage. You and I are as
firmly bound together by the law as if--well, as if we meant it."

She leaned forward a little; her face was etched in Rembrandt lights by
the glare from some shop windows.

"Mr. Curtis," she said earnestly, "it is neither just nor reasonable
that you should plunge yourself into difficulties for the sake of a
girl whom you met to-night for the first time. Why not go out of my
life now--this instant? . . . Marcelle and I can find refuge
somewhere. The hour is early. . . . Why should you take all the risk?"

He was ready for some such appeal on her part.

"I was taught in school if I did a thing at all to do it thoroughly,"
he said, "and my experience of life has given the adage a halo. It
would be worse than useless to desert you now, Lady Hermione. Whatever
penalties I may have incurred in the eyes of the law are committed
beyond hope of redemption. If I am sought for, the police know exactly
where to lay hands on me, and my crime would become monstrous if it
were proved that I ran away from my wife on the night of our marriage.
No; we must face the music boldly, and together. We must go to some
well-known hotel, register openly, secure rooms, and conduct ourselves
on the orthodox lines of all runaway couples, who are presumably head
over heels in love with each other. Moreover, in the morning, or
whenever we are run to earth, you should allow me to face your father
and play the part of the indignant husband. It is essential that your
marriage should appear real, or you go back to bondage and I to prison."

"To prison!" The girl's horrified accents showed that she had hardly
given a thought to the bald consequences of her escapade.

"Yes. I am n