ere a--gentleman--you--you beast!"

Her professor merely grinned, as though the tragedy were a comedy of
the most amusing order.

"One stolen kiss----" he chuckled.

And Eileen slapped him smartly across the mouth. She started to bolt
for the door, but he dragged her back, clinging to her struggling hand.
"You--one of that band!" she cried.

"Oh, let me apologize," he laughed, rubbing the red mark about his
mouth with his free hand. "If your hero resents my robbing him of one
stingy, little kiss---- Band? What band?" But there was no question
in his eyes.

"Stop him!" cried Eileen shrilly. "Oh, please, somebody call him back!"

A sophomore, always willing to aid a lady in distress, sprang to the
chase, and Eileen, breaking loose, stumbled after him out upon the
dance floor. A waltz was under way, and the floor was jammed.

They tried to break through, but were thrust aside by laughing dancers,
who seemed to take this to be a new and diverting game.

They tried again, and now Professor Hodgson, smiling blandly, came upon
the scene and interposed further interference. Dodging past him and
narrowly avoiding collision with a whirling couple close to the wall,
Eileen scurried down the side in the direction of the cloakroom, with
big, hot tears burning down her flushed cheeks.

When she reached the cloak-room she searched it in anxious haste for
the Marconi cap, the light-blue overcoat. Both were missing.

With the sophomore atow, and conscious of the romantic nature of his
errand, she ran into the moonlit street, looking up and down the
black-shadowed sidewalk for signs of the straight, tall figure.

Down the street, perhaps a quarter of a mile distant, she made out the
motionless streamer of lights of a train, the San Francisco train.

With her gray Quaker dress flapping, and the clutter of white
petticoats hindering the rhythm of her knees and ankles, Eileen sped
down the middle of the road with the excited sophomore bringing up a
mad rear.

The fate of her life lay in the train's waiting. She knew what Peter
Moore would do. And if she could not stop him, she would be nothing
less than his murderer. Had the evidences of her apparent infidelity
been less damning she knew that Peter Moore would have waited, would
have listened to her explanation, and believed her.

If she could only reach the train, she could tell him, could compel him
to wait, and thereupon have it out with that cad Hodgson. It