ference!

"She wouldn't care if you jumped up and threw me out of the window," he
affirmed. "That's why this hole is so harmless. Oh, isn't that harmless?
What's more harmless than to let one alone? There's only one dangerous
thing here," he grinned and let her take her choice of which.

She came straight at it.

"You know I can't let you alone."

He laughed. "Well, isn't that why we're here at last--that you may
dictate your terms?"

"I have. Didn't you get my letter?"

"Oh, indeed I did. Haven't I obeyed it? Haven't I kept away from your
house? Have I tried to approach you?"

"Haven't you, though?" she threw at him accusingly.

"Ah," he deprecated, "you came to me. I was down in the garden."

She looked at him through his persiflage wistfully, searchingly. "But
there were other things in that letter."

"There were?" He regarded her with grave surprise. Oh, how she
mistrusted his gravity! "Why, to be sure there were things--things that
you didn't mean--one thing above all others you couldn't mean, that you
want me to drop out when the game is half done, to slink away and leave
it all like this--abandon you and my Idol so to each other! My dear, for
what do you take me?"

She burst out. "But can't you see the danger?"

He met it quietly.

"Certainly. I have been seeing nothing else but the danger--to you. Do
you think I've been idle all these days? Every line I have followed has
ended in that. It's brought me finally to this." The gesture of his hand
included their predicament and the dingy little room. "You'll really
have to help me, after all."

"Oh, haven't I tried to? That is why I wrote. Don't you see your own
danger at all?"

"No, but I'd like to." He leaned toward her, brows lifted to a quizzical
peak.

"Oh, I can't tell you," she despaired. "But somehow I shall have to make
you go."

"That will be easy," he said. Leaning back, nursing his chin in his
hand, he watched her with a gloomy sort of brooding. "You know what it
is I'm waiting for. You know I won't go without it." His words came
sadly, but doggedly, with a grim finality, as if he gave himself up to
the course he was following as something he knew was inevitable. The
faintness of despair came over her. Only the narrow table was between
them, yet all at once, with the mention of the ring, he seemed a long
way off. What was this terrible obsession that outweighed every other
consideration with him? How get at it? How get through it? O