Presently he tried to pull himself together. He remembered the main purpose of his presence here.

“But at least you will let me help you?”

“Certainly—if I need you.”

He leaned closer. “You never needed me more than now!”

“For what reason?”

“You are in danger—great danger!”

She started, and gazed at him with a sharp penetration[41] which even at that moment struck him as peculiar. “In what danger?”

[41]

Her question took him back. In his intensity he had forgotten that he knew so little that was definite.

“I thought you would know,” he confessed. And then, with a ring of certainty, “If you do not know yourself to be in danger, then why are you in hiding?”

She ignored his last sentence. “I am in no danger of which I am conscious.”

He seized upon the one point he was certain of. “But you have been seeing Peter Loveman. I hope you are not letting him get control of your affairs.”

“Mr. Loveman has merely been giving me some friendly advice. He is a very able lawyer.”

“There is no abler lawyer in New York than Peter Loveman. But Peter Loveman cannot be trusted.”

“I am not trusting him—very far.” She spoke with that supreme self-confidence that had always characterized her. “And I believe I can take care of myself.” This last she added coldly, yet not unkindly.

Clifford felt himself baffled. And then, suddenly, he remembered another possible source of danger to her—or at least of danger to that Mary Regan he had believed her to be. Could she, as the worldly-wise old Uncle George had suggested, have felt the pull of old associations, old points of view, and have reverted—

But even as he was thinking of this, she with her remarkable keenness had read his mind. “Don’t[42] worry about that. I have no intention of going back to the sort of things I once 

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