his life and overcomes
it, there is a queer relaxation of strained nerves,--with a woman the
result would be hysteria; with a man of Warren Jarvis' type it was a
self-surprising amiability and calmness.

"Would you mind bolting the door again? He might return. And thank you
very much for delaying the death sentence--now I can explain."

The girl glided to the door and tested the lock. It was secure, and she
turned about to return that infectious smile of the eyes, albeit
grudgingly.

Warren, finally realizing that he was weak from strain, and aching in
every muscle from the ordeal of the past twenty-four hours, looked
appealing at the comfortable armchair.

"May I sit down for just a minute?" he pleaded. "I have not slept since
the night before last. I have not rested for a fortnight."

The girl nodded. He relaxed, and dropped into a blessed position of
comfort. He buried his face in his hands--how many times had he struck
this same attitude since the bitter days at Meadow Green, without
realizing the repetition!

For two minutes or an hour he sat there--he knew not which. His
companion, with sudden renewal of consciousness of the _deshabille_ of
her dressing-gown, retreated to the corner of the brass bed. She sat
down, to scrutinize the better this strange intruder. The moonlight
which fell in pale green bars across the Bokhara beneath her slippered
feet; the melodramatic situation which had brought them together; the
unmistakable gentility of this compelling intruder of her maidenly
domain; the curious collapse of his aggressiveness--all these things
united to cast a sympathetic spell over her. She was foolish--to the
extreme of placing herself in a ridiculous situation! She was
culpable--in protecting a self-confessed butcher! She was weak--in
yielding to girlish sentiment by permitting this man to shatter the
conventionalities,--she who had been accustomed, throughout her twenty
years of adulation and awe-inspiring respect, to a servile respect from
every man, woman, and child! And, worst of all to an essentially
feminine mind, she had allowed this presumptuous, calculating stranger
to override her better judgment, to subjugate her resistance, without a
visible tribute to the charms which had stirred the masculine souls of
a continent!

And yet, in spite of--perhaps, _because of_--all these illogical,
provoking, equilibrium-shattering irritants--she sat there, patiently,
eagerly awaiting an explanation. Con