s. I have lost it all--all, you
understand--the four thousand pounds and every penny I have of my own."

He sat quite still. He was watching her through his gold-rimmed
spectacles. There was the slightest possible frown upon his forehead.
The time for talking of money as though it were a trifle had passed.

"That is a great deal," he said.

"It is a great deal," she admitted. "I owe it to you and I cannot pay.
What are you going to do?"

He watched her eagerly. There was a new note in her voice. He paused to
consider what it might mean. A single false step now and he might lose
all that he had striven for.

"How am I to answer that?" he asked softly. "I will answer it first in
the way that seems most natural. I will beg you to accept your losings
as a little gift from me--as a proof, if you will, of my friendship."

He had saved the situation. If he had obeyed his first impulse, the
affair would have been finished. He realised it as he watched her face,
and he shuddered at the thought of his escape. His words obviously
disturbed her.

"It is not possible for me," she protested, "to accept money from you."

"Not from Linda's husband?"

She threw her cigarette into the grate and stood looking at him.

"Do you offer it to me as Linda's husband?" she demanded.

It was a crisis for which Draconmeyer was scarcely prepared. He was
driven out of his pusillanimous compromise. She was pressing him hard
for the truth. Again the fear of losing her altogether terrified him.

"If I have other feelings of which I have not spoken," he said quietly,
"have I not kept them to myself? Do I obtrude them upon you even now? I
am content to wait."

"To wait for what?" she insisted.

All that had been in his mind seemed suddenly miraged before him--the
removal of Hunterleys, his own wife's failing health. The way had seemed
so clear only a little time ago, and now the clouds were back again.

"Until you appreciate the fact," he told her, "that you have no more
sincere friend, that there is no one who values your happiness more than
I do."

"Supposing I take this money from you," she asked, after a moment's
pause. "Are there any conditions?"

"None whatever," he answered.

She turned away with a little sigh. The tragedy which a few minutes ago
she had seen looming up, eluded her. She had courted a denouement in
vain. He was too clever.

"You are very generous," she said. "We will speak of this to-morrow. I
called you in b