to her
home, and find acceptance. But why not? Was it Crailey who had publicly
called his fellow-man fool, idiot, imbecile, at the top of his lungs,
only to find himself the proven numskull of the universe! Tom stood for
a moment staring after the vanishing pair, while over his face stole the
strangest expression that ever man saw there; then, with meekly bowed
shoulders, he turned again to his work.

At the corner of the warehouse, Miss Carewe detached her hand from
Crailey's, yet still followed him as he made a quick detour round the
next building. A minute or two later they found themselves, undetected,
upon Main Street in the rear of the crowd. There Crailey paused.

"Forgive me," he said, breathlessly, "for taking your hand. I thought
you would like to get away."

She regarded him gravely, so that he found it difficult to read
her look, except that it was seriously questioning; but whether the
interrogation was addressed to him or to herself he could not determine.
After a silence she said:

"I don't know why I followed you. I believe it must have been because
you didn't give me time to think."

This, of course, made him even quicker with her than before. "It's all
over," he said briskly. "The first warehouse is gone; the second will
go, but they'll save the others easily enough, now that you have
pointed out that the lines may be utilized otherwise than as adjuncts of
performances on the high trapeze!" They were standing by a picket-fence,
and he leaned against it, overcome by mirth in which she did not join.
Her gravity reacted upon him at once, and his laughter was stopped
short. "Will you not accept me as an escort to your home?" he said
formally. "I do not know," she returned simply, the sort of honest
trouble in her glance that is seen only in very young eyes.

"'What reason in the world!" he returned, with a crafty sharpness of
astonishment.

She continued to gaze upon him thoughtfully, while he tried to look into
her eyes, but was baffled because the radiant beams from the lady's orbs
(as the elder Chenoweth might have said) rested somewhere dangerously
near his chin, which worried him, for, though his chin made no retreat
and was far from ill-looking, it was, nevertheless, that feature which
he most distrusted. "Won't you tell me why not?" he repeated, uneasily.

"Because," she answered at last, speaking hesitatingly, "because it
isn't so easy a matter for me as you seem to think. You have not be