known how I felt, and it would have been better all around"

He bent toward me, and crushed both my hands in his, looking into my
face with a gaze that was in itself a caress.

"Now you must go home, little girl, back to--your--husband." The
words came slowly.

"When shall I see you again, Jack?" I knew the answer even before it
came.

"When you need me, dear girl, if you ever do," he replied. "I can't
be near you without loving you and hating your husband, whoever he may
be, and that is a dangerous state of affairs. But, wherever I am, a
note or a wire to the Hotel Alfred will be forwarded to me, and, if
the impossible should happen and your husband ever fail you, remember,
Jack is waiting, ready to do anything for you."

My tears were falling fast now. Jack laid his hand upon my shoulder.

"Come, Margaret, you must control yourself," he said in his old
brotherly voice. "I want you to tell me your new name and address. I'm
never going to lose track of you, remember that. You won't see me, but
your big brother will be on the job just the same."

I told him, and he wrote it carefully down in his note-book. Then he
looked at me fixedly.

"You would better put your engagement and wedding rings back on," he
said. "Of course I realize now that you must have taken them off when
you removed your gloves in the restaurant, with the thought that you
did not want to spoil my dinner by telling me of your marriage. But
you must have them on when you meet your husband, you know."

How like Jack, putting aside his own suffering to be sure of my
welfare. I put my hand in my muff, drew out my mesh bag and opened it.

"Jack!" I gasped, horror-stricken, "my rings are gone!"

"Impossible!" His face was white. He snatched my mesh bag from my
grasp. "Where did you put them? In here?"

Jack turned the mesh bag inside out. A handkerchief, a small coin
purse, two or three bills of small denominations, an envelope with a
tiny powder puff--these were all.

"Are you sure you put them in here?"

"Yes." I could hardly articulate the word, I was so frightened.

"Have you opened your bag since?"

I thought a moment. Had I? Then a rush of remembrance came to me.

"I took out a handkerchief when I cried in the restaurant."

"You must have drawn them out then, and either dropped them there,
or they may have been caught in the handkerchief and dropped in the
taxi." We searched without success and Jack's face darkened as he
ordered th