ickshaw stopped. A ghostly figure seemed to float to
the ground. There was a clink of coins. A door opened, letting out a
wide shaft of orange light which spattered across the paving,
flattening itself against the grim wall of the building across the way.

Peter caught the bronze glint of wires on the roof under a pale moon.

He knocked sharply on the door, and stood to one side. It was a habit
he had learned from long experience--that trick of stepping to one side
when he knocked at a suspicious door. The door moved outward a few
inches. A long, yellow face, with a thick, projecting under lip,
peered out. Peter pushed the man aside and entered.

He found himself in a low corridor of smoked wood, with fat candles
disposed along the walls at intervals of several yards, on a narrow,
lacquered rail. One of three doors was open.

A match was struck, the head glowing in a semi-circle of sputtering
iridescence before the wood itself kindled. The hand holding the match
was trembling; the weak flame fluttered to such an extent that he was
denied momentarily a glimpse of the owner of the hand.

A whisper was conveying an order to him. "Please shut the door, Mr.
Moore."

He reached for the door and closed it firmly in the face of the man who
had let him into this place.

When he turned, the trembling hand was applying the match flame to the
wick of an open lamp, a rather ornate _dong_. As the flame rose
higher, casting its steady, mild luminance, he caught a glitter of
metal, of polished rubber; one end of the room was almost filled with
machinery.

"Romola Borria!"

She seemed to have undergone a great change. The beautiful face that
had lured him once into the jaws of death was dominated now by a
wistful and tender sadness, as though this girl had gone through an
epoch of self-torture since they had last been together.

Yet she was still beautiful; it was as if her beauty had been refined
in an intense fire. Her mouth was sad, her great brown eyes glowed
with an inexpressible sadness, and her face, once oval and proud,
seemed narrower, whiter, and, by many degrees, of a finer mold.

She was examining him broodingly; there was a reluctant timidity in her
eyes; it was such a look as you may see years afterward in the woman
you once have cast aside for some other, perhaps not quite so worthy.

"Well, you have found me, Peter," she said in a faint and tired voice,
coming slowly toward him.

"Yes," he ad