us one! You're a star heroine, and a martyr and a saint, and I
don't know what not. But most of all, you are my life--my very life.
I've had a big disappointment since I parted from you--lost a thing I'd
wanted for years--lost it to Roger Sands. His revenge for--I hardly know
what! Yet finding you and holding you like this shows me that nothing
else matters. What's a house, anyhow, except this darling house not made
with hands--your little body, house of your soul? When you know me
better, could you learn to love me, do you think, if I try hard to teach
you?"

"Oh, but I do love you already," said Clo, as a matter of course. "Even
that first night--there was something about you--I hated to cheat and
rob you the way I did. And it was wonderful hearing your voice in the
telephone, in Peterson's dreadful room. It wasn't only that I hoped
you'd help, it was because it was you--because you were different for me
from anybody else, different even from Angel."

"Good Lord, I should hope so!"

"And I've wanted you dreadfully ever since. That's why I thought it must
be heaven when I woke up just now and saw you."

"You angel!"

"How funny you should call me that. Oh, I've almost forgotten my poor
Angel! I must get to her, somehow." Clo looked around hastily, and
realized that she was lying on a bed in a peculiarly unattractive room,
and that O'Reilly was kneeling on the floor by the bedside. "How wicked
of me to think more about you than her!"

"If you mean Mrs. Sands, you shall go to her when you're able. Mrs.
Sands is all right. You sent her something rather important by Miss
Blackburne, the pearl-stringer that you told me about that night in the
taxi--and in Krantz's Keller. I talked to the woman--and cursed myself
afterward for stopping to speak, when I found you and saw how every
instant had counted. I oughtn't to have waited even for a second."

"Oh, you couldn't have saved me if you'd come up without speaking to
Ellen. The shot was fired before I threw out the bag with the pearls,"
Clo broke in. "I remember now. Someone fired through the hole in the
door. It was Chuff, I'm sure. It didn't hurt much. It was like a heavy
blow, and I couldn't help dropping on my knees at the window. I felt
weak and queer, but I called to Ellen. Then somebody picked me up--Kit,
I think. I could hear them arguing what to do with me. Funny! I thought
of you then--and that's the last I remember till now."

"I must have been in the house