simply. She spoke to Roger, but for an instant her eyes turned to me. 

 "Oh, darling," cried Grace, springing up as Maida rose, "it's not fair—such short notice! Send word that you can't." 

 "The only thing I can't do, dear, is to break my promise," the girl cut in.  "I must go, and she asks me to travel alone to Salthaven. That's the nearest station for the Sisterhood House. She gives me the time of the train I'm to take—seven o'clock. After all, why isn't one day the same as another? Only, it's hard to say good-bye." 

 To leave my love thus, and without even the chance to win her, which instinct whispered I might have had, seemed unbearable. But there was no other course. She gave me her hand.  "Could it be that she was sorry?" I dared ask myself. But before I had time to realise how irrevocable it all was, I stood outside Odell's closed door. I stared at the barrier for a minute before getting into my car, and tried to make the oak panels transparent.  "I won't let her go out of my life like this," I said.  "I'll fight." 

 Before I'd reached my hotel I had thought out the first move in a plan of action. But maybe there is another thing I ought to mention, before I speak of that plan. Roger gave me, when I left him, an interesting description of an electrical contrivance by which he protected the chief treasure of his sister's shrine from burglars. He insisted on giving me the secret in writing, also, because he would have to go away shortly, and wanted someone to know what to do "in case anything went wrong."  The servants, though trustworthy, were aware only that such a protection existed and was dangerous to meddlers. 

 Consulting with West, the chauffeur, I learned that to reach Salthaven, Long Island (the nearest village to Pine Cliff), passengers must change at Jamaica. I told him to get to that junction in the morning without fail, before the seven o'clock train was due, and we arranged to start even earlier than necessary, to allow for delay. In the hotel office I asked to be waked at five, in the unlikely event that I should oversleep, and was going to the lift when the clerk at the information desk called after me, "I believe, Lord John, a big box arrived for you. It was before I came on duty, but you'll find it in your suite." 

 Nothing seemed less important in that mood of mine, than the arrival of a box. I had ordered nothing, expected nothing, wanted nothing—except a thing it seemed unlikely I could ever have; so when I found no box in 

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