but
a responsibility, not a security but an infinite risk. Its very momentum
might drag him down to ruin--the passing of the emotional wave that made
it possible might leave the one who made it high and dry forever on an
island of despair.

... Amory knew that afterward Alec would secretly hate him for having
done so much for him....

... All this was flung before Amory like an opened scroll, while
ulterior to him and speculating upon him were those two breathless,
listening forces: the gossamer aura that hung over and about the girl
and that familiar thing by the window.

Sacrifice by its very nature was arrogant and impersonal; sacrifice
should be eternally supercilious.

_Weep not for me but for thy children._

That--thought Amory--would be somehow the way God would talk to me.

Amory felt a sudden surge of joy and then like a face in a
motion-picture the aura over the bed faded out; the dynamic shadow
by the window, that was as near as he could name it, remained for the
fraction of a moment and then the breeze seemed to lift it swiftly out
of the room. He clinched his hands in quick ecstatic excitement... the
ten seconds were up....

"Do what I say, Alec--do what I say. Do you understand?"

Alec looked at him dumbly--his face a tableau of anguish.

"You have a family," continued Amory slowly. "You have a family and it's
important that you should get out of this. Do you hear me?" He repeated
clearly what he had said. "Do you hear me?"

"I hear you." The voice was curiously strained, the eyes never for a
second left Amory's.

"Alec, you're going to lie down here. If any one comes in you act drunk.
You do what I say--if you don't I'll probably kill you."

There was another moment while they stared at each other. Then Amory
went briskly to the bureau and, taking his pocket-book, beckoned
peremptorily to the girl. He heard one word from Alec that sounded like
"penitentiary," then he and Jill were in the bathroom with the door
bolted behind them.

"You're here with me," he said sternly. "You've been with me all
evening."

She nodded, gave a little half cry.

In a second he had the door of the other room open and three men
entered. There was an immediate flood of electric light and he stood
there blinking.

"You've been playing a little too dangerous a game, young man!"

Amory laughed.

"Well?"

The leader of the trio nodded authoritatively at a burly man in a check
suit.

"All right, Olson."