aid to you just now is legally quite true?"

The smile passed from the face of the girl. She looked at the young man
with fine disdain, as a great lady might reprove with a glance the man
who snapped a camera at her. "Yes?" she asked. "Well, what are you going
to do about it--arrest me?" Mocking him, in a burlesque of melodrama,
she held out her arms. "Don't put the handcuffs on me," she begged.

Winthrop found her impudence amusing; and, with the charm of her
novelty, he was conscious of a growing conviction that, somewhere, they
had met before; that already at a crisis she had come into his life.

"I won't arrest you," he said with a puzzled smile, "on one condition."

"Ah!" mocked Vera; "he is generous."

"And the condition is," Winthrop went on seriously, "that you tell me
where we met before?"

The girl's expression became instantly mask-like. To learn if he
suspected where it was that they had met, she searched his face quickly.
She was reassured that of the event he had no real recollection.

"That's rather difficult, isn't it," she continued lightly, "when you
consider I've been giving exhibitions of mind readings for the last six
weeks on Broadway, and in the homes of people you probably know?"

"No," Winthrop exclaimed eagerly, "it wasn't in a theatre, and it wasn't
in a private house. It was--" he shook his head helplessly, and looked
at her for assistance. "You don't know, do you?"

The girl regarded him steadily. "How should I?" she said. And then, as
though decided upon a course of action of the wisdom of which she was
uncertain, she laughed uneasily.

"But the spirits would know," she said. "I might ask them."

"Do!" cried Winthrop, delightedly. "How much would that be?"

As though to reprove his flippancy, the girl frowned. With a nervous
tremor, which this time seemed genuine enough, she threw back her head,
closed her eyes, and laid her arm across her forehead.

Winthrop, unobserved, watched her with a smile, partly of amusement,
partly on account of her beauty, of admiration.

"I see--a court room," said the girl. "It is very mean and bare. It is
somewhere up the State; in a small town. Outside, there are trees, and
the sun is shining, and people are walking in a public park. Inside, in
the prisoner's dock, there is a girl. She has been arrested--for theft.
She has pleaded guilty! And I see--that she has been very ill--that she
is faint from shame--and fear--and lack of food. And there i