leaned out to tell the driver to
turn back.

Mamise was uneasy till they were out of the park and into the lighted
streets again. But there was no safety here, for as they glided down
Charles Street a taxicab going with the reckless velocity of taxicabs
tried to cut across their path.

There was a swift fencing for the right of way, and then the two cars
came together with a clash and much crumpling of fenders.

The drivers descended to wrangle over the blame, and Mamise had
visions of a trip to the police station, with a consequent exposure.
But Nicky was alive to the danger of notoriety. He got out and assumed
the blame, taking the other driver's part and offering to pay the
damages.

The taxicab-driver assessed them liberally at fifty dollars, and Nicky
filled his palm with bills, ordering his own driver to proceed. The
car limped along with a twisted steering-gear, and Nicky growled
thanksgivings over the narrow escape the German Empire had had from
losing two of its most valuable agents.

Mamise was sick with terror of what might have been. She saw the
collision with a fatal result, herself and Nicky killed and flung to
the street, dead together. It was not the fear of dying that froze
her soul; it was the posthumous blow she would have given to Davidge's
trust in her and all women, the pain she would have inflicted on his
love. For to his dying day he would have believed her false to him, a
cheap and nasty trickster, sneaking off to another town to a
rendezvous with another man. And that man a German!

The picture of his bitter disillusionment and of her own unmerited and
eternal disgrace was intolerably real in spite of the fact that she
knew it to be untrue, for our imaginations are far more ancient and
more irresistible than our late and faltering reliance on the truth;
the heavens and hells we fancy have more weight with our credulities
than any facts we encounter. We can dodge the facts or close our eyes
to them, but we cannot escape our dreams, whether our eyes are wide or
sealed.

Mamise could not free herself of this nightmare till she had bidden
Nicky good-by the last time and left him in the cab outside the
station.

Further nightmares awaited her, for in the waiting-room she could not
fight off the conviction that the train would never arrive. When it
came clanging in on grinding wheels and she clambered aboard, she knew
that it would be wrecked, and the finding of her body in the debris,
o