incessantly opening doors. For in spite of his good night's sleep he felt weak and a little giddy. Resolving to dismiss the past from his mind and concern himself solely with the present was good logic, but difficult of accomplishment. First, and dominating all his thought, was Marcreta Morgan. The thought of her brought him a dull pain. So many letters he had written her since his return to New York, and not one of them had she ever answered. Once, in vague alarm, he had even written to Clinton, but there had been no reply. And then pride had held him silent. So he couldn't go to the house on Pine Street now. He wouldn't go, he decided fiercely, until he had a decent position and had reëstablished himself in civilian life.

Over at the news-stand a girl was fitting picture post-cards into a rack. Kenwick walked over to her and with a part of the change left from his meager breakfast bought a morning paper. While she picked it off the pile he stood twirling the circular rack absently with one hand. The Cliff House, Golden Gate Park, and prominent business blocks whirled past his eyes, but he was not conscious of them. He took his newspaper and turned away.

Halfway to the door he opened it and glanced at the sensational menu spread out for his delectation upon the front page. All at once something inside his brain seemed to crumple up. The Cliff House, Golden Gate Park, and tall office-buildings sped around him in a circle, like a merry-go-round gone mad. Somehow he found his way back to the corner seat and sank into it. And there he sat like a stone man, staring at, but no longer seeing, the front page of his newspaper.

CHAPTER VII

Two hours after Roger Kenwick had taken his gruesome departure from the house of the iron gate, a mud-spattered car turned in at the side entrance to the grounds which he had quitted. The man behind the wheel drove recklessly, careening between the double row of eucalyptus-trees like some low-flying bird of prey seeking its carrion. At the shallow front steps he brought the car to an abrupt halt as though he had found the thing for which he sought. Tugging at his heavy gloves he sprang up the steps, two at a time. "Lord! What a handsome place this is!" he muttered. "What a place for dinners and dancing—and love!"

He pressed the electric button and heard its buzz pierce the stillness of the house. "It's a crime!" He was walking up and down before the closed door, flapping his gloves against his chest. "It's a crime for a man to live in a place like this alone." He pressed the button 

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