k this as naturally as she had taken his first remark.

"It's going to be very hard for you. I was wrong to draw you into it. I
am realizing that more and more, every minute."

"You couldn't help yourself," he cheerfully reminded her. "Now that I am
in it, as I've warned you before, I intend to run things. It seems to me
that the obvious course for you is to move. After you're safely hidden
somewhere, I think I can teach Herbert Ransome Shaw a lesson that won't
react on you."

She shook her head.

"If I moved, how long do you think it would take him to find me?"

"Weeks, perhaps months."

Again she shook her head.

"I moved here a few days ago. He appeared exactly forty-eight hours
later. If I moved from here it would only mean going through the game of
hare and hounds again."

"But--" he began. She interrupted him.

"I've reached the point where I can't endure that any more." For the
first time her voice broke. "Can't you imagine what that sort of thing
would be? To get up in the morning and wonder if this is the day I'll
see him under my window? To go to bed at night and ask myself if he is
lurking in the shadows below, or across the street, or perhaps outside
my very door? To know that sooner or later he will be there, that his
coming is as inevitable as death itself--" She broke off.

"I sometimes think I'd rather see a boa-constrictor crawling into my
room than see Shaw down on the sidewalk," she ended. "And yet--I know
you can understand this--there's a queer kind of relief in the knowledge
that at last, and finally, he has got me."

She whirled to face Laurie and threw out her hands. There was nothing
theatrical in the gesture, merely an effect of entire finality.

"We have come to the end of things," she finished. "Since you would not
have them end my way, they must end his way. Whatever happens, I shall
not run and hide any more."

For a moment silence hung like a substance between them. Then the
visitor resolutely shook off the effect of her words.

"I promise you I will get to the bottom of this," he quietly told her.
"In the meantime, will you try to forget it, for a little while? You
know you said you could do that, occasionally."

He was clearing the table as he spoke. Now he proceeded to unpack a
basket he had sent over an hour before by Griggs, and which, he
observed, had not been opened. Dropping back into her big chair, she
watched him with an odd look. If he had seen this look it wou