elebrated for his good looks and masculine charm. He was of the
square-shouldered, easy-moving, rich-coloured type; just now his handsome
eye looked perturbed.

"I am going away suddenly," he said, in answer to Baird's questioning
expression. "I want to catch the next train. I want you to see me
off--_you_."

"Let us get in," was Baird's brief reply. He had an instant revelation
that the circumstance was not trivial or accidental.

As the door closed and the cab rolled away his companion leaned back,
folding his arms.

"I had an hour to pass before keeping an appointment," he said. "And I
dropped in to hear you. You put things before a man in a new way. You are
appallingly vivid. I am not going to keep my appointment. It is not easy
_not_ to keep it! I shall take the train to New York and catch
to-morrow's steamer to Liverpool. Don't leave me until you have seen me
off. I want to put the Atlantic Ocean and a year of time between myself
and----"

"Temptation," said Baird, though he scarcely realised that he spoke.

"Oh, the devil!" exclaimed the other man savagely. "Call her that if you
like--call me that--call the whole thing that! She does not realise where
we are drifting. She's a lovely dreamer and has not realised that we are
human. I did not allow myself to realise it until the passion of your
words brought me face to face with myself. I am repenting in time. Don't
leave me! I can't carry it through to-night alone."

John Baird leaned back in the corner of the carriage and folded his arms
also. His heart was leaping beneath them.

"Great God!" he said, out of the darkness. "I wish someone had said such
words to me--years ago--and not left me afterwards! Years ago!"

"I thought so," his companion answered, briefly. "You could not have
painted it with such flaming power--otherwise."

They did not speak again during the drive. They scarcely exchanged a
dozen words before they parted. The train was in the station when they
entered it.

Five minutes later John Baird stood upon the platform, looking after the
carriages as they rolled out noisily behind trailing puffs of smoke and
steam.

He had asked no questions, and, so far as his own knowledge was
concerned, this was the beginning, the middle, and the end of the story.
But he knew that there had been a story, and there might have been a
tragedy. It seemed that the intensity of his own cry for justice and
mercy had arrested at least one of the actors in