foolishly frightened that he could not move a step. 

 He waited. At last he whispered "Is any one there?" 

 There was no answer. He pushed his way then out of the shadow, his heart drumming against his shirt. There was no one there. Of course there was not. 

 In his room once more with his friend Strang and the Rembrandt Donkey to take him home he sat on his bed holding his hands between his knees. 

 He was positively afraid of going down to dinner. Afraid of what? Afraid of being drawn in. Drawn into what? That was precisely what he did not know, but something that ever since his first glimpse of Maradick at the Reform Club had been preparing. It was that he saw, as he sat there thinking of it, that he feared—this Something that was piling up outside him and with which he had nothing to do at all. 

 Why should he mind because he had heard a girl say that she was frightened and wanted to go home? And yet he did mind—minded terribly and with increasing violence from every moment that passed. The thought of that child without a friend and on the very edge of an experience that might indeed be fatal for her, the thought of it was more than he could endure. 

 He was clever at escaping things did they only give him a moment's pause, but in this case the longer he thought about it the harder it was to escape from. It was as though the girl had made her personal appeal to himself. 

 But what an old scamp her father must be, Harkness thought, to give her up like this to a man for whom she has no love, who doesn't love her. Why did she do it? And what kind of a man is the father-in-law of whom she is so afraid and who dominates his son so absolutely? In any case I must go down to dinner. I must just take what comes. . . 

 Yes, but his prudence whispered, don't meddle in this affair actively. It isn't the kind of thing in which you are likely to distinguish yourself. 

 "No, by Jove, it isn't." 

 "Well, then, be careful." 

 "I mean to be." Then suddenly the girl's voice came sharp and clear. "Damn it, I'll do anything I can," he cried aloud, jumped from the bed and went downstairs. 

XIV

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