n the base element of safety.

"I don't understand you," she faltered.

"Trust me, instead!" he adjured her, with sudden energy; and turning on
her abruptly, "If you go, you know, you go free," he concluded.

She drew back, paling a little. "Why do you make it harder for me?"

"To make it easier for myself," he retorted.

IV

Glennard, the next afternoon, leaving his office earlier than usual,
turned, on his way home, into one of the public libraries.

He had the place to himself at that closing hour, and the librarian
was able to give an undivided attention to his tentative request for
letters--collections of letters. The librarian suggested Walpole.

"I meant women--women's letters."

The librarian proffered Hannah More and Miss Martineau.

Glennard cursed his own inarticulateness. "I mean letters to--to some
one person--a man; their husband--or--"

"Ah," said the inspired librarian, "Eloise and Abailard."

"Well--something a little nearer, perhaps," said Glennard, with
lightness. "Didn't Merimee--"

"The lady's letters, in that case, were not published."

"Of course not," said Glennard, vexed at his blunder.

"There are George Sand's letters to Flaubert."

"Ah!" Glennard hesitated. "Was she--were they--?" He chafed at his own
ignorance of the sentimental by-paths of literature.

"If you want love-letters, perhaps some of the French eighteenth
century correspondences might suit you better--Mlle. Aisse or Madame de
Sabran--"

But Glennard insisted. "I want something modern--English or American. I
want to look something up," he lamely concluded.

The librarian could only suggest George Eliot.

"Well, give me some of the French things, then--and I'll have Merimee's
letters. It was the woman who published them, wasn't it?"

He caught up his armful, transferring it, on the doorstep, to a cab
which carried him to his rooms. He dined alone, hurriedly, at a small
restaurant near by, and returned at once to his books.

Late that night, as he undressed, he wondered what contemptible impulse
had forced from him his last words to Alexa Trent. It was bad enough to
interfere with the girl's chances by hanging about her to the obvious
exclusion of other men, but it was worse to seem to justify his weakness
by dressing up the future in delusive ambiguities. He saw himself
sinking from depth to depth of sentimental cowardice in his reluctance
to renounce his hold on her; and it filled him with self-di