ed at a great hotel overlooking the aviation ground. The place
was crowded, and they experienced some difficulty in finding places.
Eventually Doris found herself seated at a square table with Caryl and
two others in the middle of the great room.

She was studying a menu as a pretext for avoiding conversation with her
_fiance_, when a man's voice murmured hurriedly in her ear:

"Will you allow me for a moment please? The lady who has just left this
table thinks she must have dropped one of her gloves under it."

Doris pushed back her chair and would have risen, but the speaker was
already on his knees and laid a hasty, restraining hand upon her. It
found hers and, under cover of the table-cloth, pressed a screw of paper
into her fingers.

The next instant he emerged, very red in the face, but triumphant, a
lady's gauntlet glove in his hand.

"Awfully obliged!" he declared. "Sorry to have disturbed you. Thought I
should find it here."

He smiled, bowed, and departed, leaving Doris amazed at his audacity.
She had met this young man often at Mrs. Lockyard's house, where he was
invariably referred to as "the little Fricker boy."

She threw a furtive glance at Caryl, but he had plainly noticed nothing.
With an uneasy sense of shame she slipped the note into her glove.

She perused it on the earliest opportunity. It contained but one
sentence:

"If you still wish for freedom, you can find it down by the river at any
hour to-night."

There was no signature of any sort; none was needed, she hid the message
away again, and for the rest of the afternoon she was almost feverishly
gay to hide the turmoil of indecision at her heart.

She saw little of Caryl after luncheon, but he re-appeared again in time
to drive her back in the dog-cart as they had come. She found him very
quiet and preoccupied, on the return journey, but his presence no longer
dismayed her. It was the consciousness that a way of escape was open to
her that emboldened her.

They were nearing the end of the drive, when he at length laid aside his
preoccupation and spoke:

"Have you made up your mind yet?"

That query of his was the turning point with her. Had he shown the
smallest sign of relenting from his grim purpose, had he so much as
couched his question in terms of kindness, he might have melted her even
then; for she was impulsive ever and quick to respond to any warmth. But
the coldness of his question, the unyielding mastery of his manner,