ferings are fiction; yours will be real. But if
you are to be saved by the same means, Heaven help you to bear the
troubles that are in front of you. Before God, it would be more merciful
for me to be silent and let you go your own way."

CHAPTER III

THE VOICE IN THE DARKNESS

David was silent for some little time. The strangeness of the situation
had shut down on him again, and he was thinking of nothing else for the
moment. In the dead stillness of the place he could hear the quick
breathing of his companion; the rustle of her dress seemed near to him
and then to be very far off. Nor did the pitchy darkness yield a jot to
his now accustomed eyes. He held a hand close to his eyes, but he could
see nothing.

"Well?" the sweet voice in the darkness said, impatiently. "Well?"

"Believe me, I will give you all the assistance possible. If you would
only turn up the light--"

"Oh, I dare not. I have given my word of honour not to violate the seal
of secrecy. You may say that we have been absurdly cautious in this
matter, but you would not think so if you knew everything. Even now the
wretch who holds me in his power may have guessed my strategy and be
laughing at me. Some day, perhaps--"

The speaker stopped, with something like a sob in her throat.

"We are wasting precious time," she went on, more calmly. "I had better
tell you my history. In _your_ story a woman commits a crime: she is
guilty of a serious breach of trust to save the life of a man she loves.
By doing so she places the future and the happiness of many people in the
hands of an abandoned scoundrel. If she can only manage to regain the
thing she has parted from the situation is saved. Is not that so?"

"So far you have stated the case correctly," David murmured.

"As I said before, I am in practically similar case. Only, in my
situation, I hastened everything and risked the happiness of many people
for the sake of a little child."

"Ah!" David cried. "Your own child? No! The child of one very near and
dear to you, then. From the mere novelist point of view, that is a far
more artistic idea than mine. I see that I shall have to amend my story
before it is published."

A rippling little laugh came like the song of a bird in the darkness.

"Dear Mr. Steel," the voice said, "I implore you to do nothing of the
kind. You are a man of fertile imagination--a plot more or less makes
no difference to you. If you publish that story you go far on