ystallized all his
fears of the past hours; seeing her there, too, had intensified his want
of her. She stood there, where he had so often dreamed of seeing her,
but still holding him off with the aloofness that both chilled and
inflamed him, and with a question in her eyes. He held out his arms, but
she drew back.

"Do you mean what you have said, Louis, about leaving them, if I marry
you, and doing all you can to stop them?"

"You know I mean it."

"Then--I'll not go home."

"You are going to marry me? Now?"

"Whenever you say."

Suddenly she was trembling violently, and her lips felt dry and stiff.
He pushed her into a chair, and knelt down beside her.

"You poor little kid," he said, softly.

Through his brain were racing a hundred thoughts; Lily his, in his arms,
in spite of that white-faced drug clerk with the cold eyes; himself in
the Cardew house, one of them, beating old Anthony Cardew at his own
cynical game; and persistently held back and often rising again to the
surface, Woslosky and Doyle and the others, killers that they were,
pursuing him with their vengeance over the world. They would have to be
counted in; they were his price, as he, had he known it, was Lily's.

"My wife!" he said. "My wife."

She stiffened in his arms.

"I must go, Louis," she said. "I can't stay here. I felt very queer
downstairs. They all stared so."

There was a clock on the mantel shelf, and he looked at it. It was a
quarter before five.

"One thing is sure, Lily," he said. "You can't wander about alone,
and you are right--you can't stay here. They probably recognized you
downstairs. You are pretty well known."

For the first time it occurred to her that she had compromised herself,
and that the net, of her own making, was closing fast about her.

"I wish I hadn't come."

"Why? We can fix that all right in a jiffy."

But when he suggested an immediate marriage she made a final struggle.
In a few days, even to-morrow, but not just then. He listened,
impatiently, his eyes on the clock. Beside it in the mirror he saw his
own marred face, and it added to his anger. In the end he took control
of the situation; went into his bedroom, changed into a coat, and came
out again, ready for the street. He telephoned down for a taxicab, and
then confronted her, his face grim.

"I've let you run things pretty much to suit yourself, Lily," he said.
"Now I'm in charge. It won't be to-morrow or next week or next month. It