eason for
staying. He remained motionless at least five minutes, then he threw the
cigar butt on the ground and moved farther along the side of the house,
where he was wholly in shadow. His pretense of calm, of a lack of
interest, was gone. His muscles were alert and his eye keen to see. He
had on his military cap and he drew his cloak very closely about him
until it shrouded his whole face and figure. He might pass unnoticed in
a crowd.

Making a little circuit, he entered the street lower down, and then came
back toward the house, sauntering as if he were a casual looker-on. No
one noticed him, and he slid into a place in the little crowd, where he
stood for a few moments, then made his way toward a tall figure near the
fence.

When he was beside the house with Talbot he had seen that face under a
black hood, looking over the fence, and the single glance was
sufficient. Now he stood beside her and put his hand upon her arm as if
he had come there with her, that no one might take notice.

She started, looked up into his face, checked a cry and was silent,
though he could feel the arm quivering under the touch of his fingers.

"Why are you here?" he asked in a strained whisper. "Do you not know
better than to leave Miss Grayson's house, and, above all, to come to
this place? Are you a mad woman?"

Anger was mixed with his alarm. She seemed at that moment a child who
had disobeyed him. She shrank a little at his words, but turned toward
him luminous eyes, in which the appeal soon gave way to an indignant
fire.

"Do you know what it is to stay in hiding--to be confined within the
four walls of one room?" she said, and her voice was more intense even
than his had been. "Do you know what it is to sit in the dark and the
cold when you love the warmth and the light and the music? I saw you and
the other man and the satisfaction on your faces. Do you think that you
alone were made for enjoyment?"

Prescott looked at her in surprise, such was the fire and intensity of
her tone and so unexpected was her reply. He had associated her with
other fields of action, more strenuous phases of life than this of the
ballroom, the dance and the liquid flow of music. All at once he
remembered that she was a woman like another woman there in the ballroom
in silken skirts and with a rose in her hair. Unconsciously he placed
her by the side of Helen Harley.

"But the danger!" he said at last. "You are hunted, woman though you
are, a