to his wife without
the sense of sick mistrust that now loosened his joints....

Alexa, the next morning, over their early breakfast, surprised her
husband by an unexpected request.

"Will you bring me those letters from town?" she asked.

"What letters?" he said, putting down his cup. He felt himself as
helplessly vulnerable as a man who is lunged at in the dark.

"Mrs. Aubyn's. The book they were all talking about yesterday."

Glennard, carefully measuring his second cup of tea, said, with
deliberation, "I didn't know you cared about that sort of thing."

She was, in fact, not a great reader, and a new book seldom reached her
till it was, so to speak, on the home stretch; but she replied, with a
gentle tenacity, "I think it would interest me because I read her life
last year."

"Her life? Where did you get that?"

"Someone lent it to me when it came out--Mr. Flamel, I think."

His first impulse was to exclaim, "Why the devil do you borrow books of
Flamel? I can buy you all you want--" but he felt himself irresistibly
forced into an attitude of smiling compliance. "Flamel always has the
newest books going, hasn't he? You must be careful, by the way, about
returning what he lends you. He's rather crotchety about his library."

"Oh, I'm always very careful," she said, with a touch of competence that
struck him; and she added, as he caught up his hat: "Don't forget the
letters."

Why had she asked for the book? Was her sudden wish to see it the result
of some hint of Flamel's? The thought turned Glennard sick, but he
preserved sufficient lucidity to tell himself, a moment later, that his
last hope of self-control would be lost if he yielded to the temptation
of seeing a hidden purpose in everything she said and did. How much
Flamel guessed, he had no means of divining; nor could he predicate,
from what he knew of the man, to what use his inferences might be put.
The very qualities that had made Flamel a useful adviser made him the
most dangerous of accomplices. Glennard felt himself agrope among alien
forces that his own act had set in motion....

Alexa was a woman of few requirements; but her wishes, even in trifles,
had a definiteness that distinguished them from the fluid impulses of
her kind. He knew that, having once asked for the book, she would not
forget it; and he put aside, as an ineffectual expedient, his momentary
idea of applying for it at the circulating library and telling her that
all the