If I do it now, don't listen to me. But, if I'm worth it to you, Amaryllis, take me, and you shan't regret it."

"You are worth anything—everything!" she cried, much distressed. "Worth ever so much more, dear Sir Randal, than I could give. But I'd give you all that I am—indeed I would—if it wasn't for—for——"

"Yes?" he asked. "Go on. Wasn't for what?"

"If it wasn't for something that says 'don't!' Oh, please understand. I like you awfully, but it says it, and says it—I don't know why."

For a moment neither spoke.

"You do understand, don't you?" she asked at last.

"I believe you, my dear," he answered; then added gently: "There's a happier man somewhere, I think."

Amaryllis opened her eyes wide, almost, it seemed, in fear.

"Oh, no, no!" she cried. "Truthfully, I don't know any more than I've told you."

When he was gone, she sat for a long time, wishing she could feel alone.

Several times between lunch and dinner that day had Amaryllis wondered why Dick Bellamy was so taciturn—silent and sombre almost to moroseness. But Randal had no doubt that he knew.

Dick, the least sullen and most even-tempered of men, was for once at war with himself. The midnight phantom had become a daylight obsession.

Although he thought he knew what women were, he had never reached a definition of "being in love." For, having more than once believed himself in that condition, he had as often found himself too suddenly free.

Before this English girl had seized upon his thoughts so that nothing else interested him, he had said there was always the car in which to run away.

He was not afraid of offending his brother, for Randal knew him as he knew Randal. But a man does not throw himself into the sea just because there is a lifebuoy handy. Secure, therefore, in his power to escape, it was not until this afternoon that he found decision forced upon him. If he went, there was good chance of freedom; if he stayed, no chance at all.

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