r a long moment she sat still, as if considering his words, her eyes
on her hands, folded in her lap. The strange, deep flush he had noticed
once before again stained her face. At last she straightened up with a
quick movement, throwing back her shoulders as if to take on again some
burden they had almost cast off.

"I am sorry to seem so mysterious," she said, "and so unresponsive. I
will tell you this much, and it is more than I ought to say. In the
situation we are in I am in his power, horribly so. He can crush me at
any time he chooses."

"Then why doesn't he?"

The gentleness of her caller's voice softened the brusqueness of his
words.

"Because--" She stopped again. For the first time she had become
embarrassed and self-conscious. She made her climax in a rush: "Lately
he insists that he has fallen in love with me!"

Laurie uttered an ejaculation. It was not a pretty one, but it nicely
fitted the emergency.

"He has hoped that to save myself, and others, I will marry him, the
contemptible, crawling snake!"

The listener was impressed by her comparison. Certainly there was
something ophidian about Shaw. He himself had noticed it.

"Then, for the time being, you're really safe?" he suggested.

"No. His patience is exhausted. He is beginning to realize that I'd
rather die."

"The police can stop all this nonsense." But Laurie spoke without his
customary authority.

"Don't imagine that. The police know nothing about this matter, and they
never will." A sudden thought struck her and she rose almost with a
spring. He rose, too, staring at her in bewilderment. She caught his
shoulders and held them tightly, in a grip wholly free from
self-consciousness.

"If you warn the police," she said swiftly; "if you draw them into this,
you will ruin everything. You will do me a harm that could never be
undone. Give me your word that you won't. Please, _please_!"

She was almost shaking him now. Under the clasp of her hands on his
shoulders Laurie paled a little, but his black eyes held hers steadily.

"Of course I promise," he said, slowly, "as you make such a point of
it."

She removed her hands and stepped back.

"Please go now."

"So soon? Why, I've only just come!"

"I know--but I'm tired."

There was no mistaking the sincerity of this. It was a poignant outcry.
Clearly, she was at the breaking-point. He took both her hands.

"This whole experience gives me the oddest feeling," he told her gently.