in to
cross beneath her body, slender hands at the length of the arms meeting
with interlaced finger-tips before her, the thumbs just touching;
shoulders back, chin up, eyes--big enough at any time, now dilated to
look twice their size--velvet circles in a white face. Like a Buddha;
I'd seen her sit so, years before, an undersized girl doing stunts for
her father in a public hall; and even then she'd been in a way
impressive. But now, in the fullness of young beauty, her fine head
relieved against the empty blue of the sky, the free winds whipping
loose flying ends of her dark hair, she held the eye like a miracle.

Sitting here so immovably, she looked to me as though life had slid away
from her for the moment, the mechanical action of lungs and heart
temporarily suspended, so that mind might work unhindered in that
beautiful shell. No, I was wrong. She was breathing; her bosom rose and
fell in slow but deep, placid inhalations and exhalations. And the pale
face might be from the slower heart-beat, or only because the surface
blood had receded to give more of strength to the brain.

The position of head of a Bankers' Security Agency carries with it a
certain amount of dignity--a dignity which, since Richardson's death, I
have maintained better than I have handled other requirements of the
business he left with me. I stood now feeling like a fool. I'd grown
gray in the work, and here in my prosperous middle life, a boy's whim
and a girl's pretty face had put me in the position of consulting a
clairvoyant. Worse, for this was a wild-cat affair, without even the
professional standing of establishments to which I knew some of the weak
brothers in my line sometimes sneaked for ghostly counsel. If it should
leak out, I was done for.

I suppose I sort of groaned, for I felt Worth put a restraining hand on
my arm, and heard his soft,

"Psst!"

The two of us stood, how long I can't say, something besides the beauty
of the young creature, even the dignity of her in this outre situation
getting hold of me, so that I was almost reverent when at last the
rigidity of her image-like figure began to relax, the pretty feet in
their silk stockings and smart pumps appeared where they belonged, side
by side on the edge of the planking, and she looked at us with eyes that
slowly gathered their normal expression, and a smile of rare human
sweetness.

"It _is_ horrid to see--and I loathe doing it!" She shook her curly dark
head like