-clothes; there was a feeling of abandonment and
loneliness in the bared arches, as on his first visit a year before.

"Bojo--is it you?"

He heard her voice descending somewhere from the upper flights of the
great stone stairway, and answered cheerily. The caretaker disappeared,
satisfied, and he waited at the foot while she came rushing down and
hung herself in his arms.

"Why, Doris!" he exclaimed, surprised at her emotion and the tenseness
of the figure that clung to him. "Doris, why, what's wrong?"

"Wait, wait," she said breathlessly, burying her head on his shoulder
and tightening the grip of her arms.

She led him, still clinging to his side, through the ballroom and the
little salon into the great library, where he had gone for his decisive
interview with Drake. They stood a moment in filtered obscurity, groping
for the buttons, until suddenly the room sprang out of the night. Then
he saw that she had been weeping. Before he could exclaim, the tears
sprang to her eyes and she flung herself in his arms again, sheltering
her head against his shoulder, clinging to his protection as though
reeling before the sudden down swoop of a storm. His first thought was
of death, a catastrophe in the family--father, mother--Patsie! At this
thought his heart seemed to stop and he said brokenly:

"Doris, what is it--nothing has happened--no one is--is in danger?"

"No, no," she said in a whisper. "Oh, don't make me speak--not just yet.
Keep your arms about me. Tighter so that I can never, never get away."

He obeyed, wondering, his mind alert, seeking a reason for this strange
emotion. Suddenly she raised her head and, seizing his in her hands with
such tenacity that he felt the cut of her sharp little fingers, kissed
him with the poignant agony of a great separation.

"Bojo, remember this," she cried through her tears, "whatever
happens--whatever comes--it is you--you! I shall love only you all my
life--no one else!"

"Whatever happens?" he said, frowning, but beginning to have a glimmer
of the truth. "What do you mean?"

She moved from him, standing, with head slightly down, staring at him
silently for a long moment. Then she said, shaking her head slowly:

"Oh, how you will hate me!"

He went to her quickly and, taking her by the wrist, led her to the big
sofa.

"Now sit down. Tell me just what this all means!"

His tone was harsh, and she glanced at him, frightened.

"It means," she said at last, "that I