write to her, explaining his
determination to take a steamer for the south, and "put it to the
touch, to win or lose it all." There seemed to be no alternative.

He did not take Steele into his confidence, because Steele agreed with
Duska, and should be able to say, when questioned, that he had not
been a party to the conspiracy. When Saxon stood, a few days later, on
the step of an inbound train, the girl stood waving her sunbonnet,
slenderly outlined against the green background of the woods beyond
the flag-station. A sudden look of pain crossed the man's face, and he
leaned far out for a last glimpse of her form.

Steele saw Duska's smile grow wistful as the last car rounded the
curve.

"I can't quite accustom myself to it," he said, slowly: "this new girl
who has taken the place of the other, of the girl who did not know how
to love."

"I know more about it," she declared, "than anybody else that ever
lived. And I've only one life to give to it."

Saxon's first mistake was born of the precipitate haste of love. He
wrote the letter to Duska that same evening on the train. It was a
difficult letter to write. He had to explain, and explain
convincingly, that he was disobeying her expressed command only
because his love was not the sort that could lull itself into false
security. If fate held any chance for him, he would bring back
victory. If he laid the ghost of Carter, he would question his sphinx
no further.

The writing was premature, because he had to stop in Washington and
seek Ribero. He had some questions to ask. But, at Washington, he
learned that Ribero had been recalled by government. Then, hurrying
through his business in New York, Saxon took the first steamer
sailing. It happened to be by a slow line, necessitating several
transfers.

It was characteristic of Duska that, when she received the letter
hardly a day after Saxon's departure, she did not at once open it,
but, slipping it, dispatch-like, into her belt, she called the
terrier, and together they went into the woods. Here, sitting among
the ferns with the blackberry thicket at her back and the creek
laughing below, she read and reread the pages.

For a while, she sat stunned, her brow drawn; then, she said to the
terrier in a voice as nearly plaintive as she ever allowed it to be:

"I don't like it. I don't want him ever to go away--and yet--" she
tossed her head upward--"yet, I guess I shouldn't have much use for
him if he didn't do j