sh. He set his utmost will at work to collect himself and to think
hard and fast.

"I came here resolved to take a man away, come what would!" he said. "I
found the door open, went to the foot of that stairway; then I stopped.
I remembered something; I turned, and was going away when you opened the
door."

"You remembered what?"

Her strained attitude did not relax, nor, to his utmost scrutiny, was
the complete astonishment of her distended gaze altered one whit, but a
hint of her accustomed high color was again upon her cheek and her lip
trembled a little, like that of a child about to weep. The flicker of
hope in his breast increased prodigiously, and the rush of it took
the breath from his throat and choked him. Good God! was she going to
believe him?

"I remembered--you!"

"What?" she said, wonderingly.

Art returned with a splendid bound, full-pinioned, his beautiful and
treacherous Familiar who had deserted him at the crucial instant; but
she made up for it now, folding him in protective wings and breathing
through his spirit. In rapid and vehement whispers he poured out the
words upon the girl in the doorway.

"I have a friend, and I would lay down my life to make him what he could
be. He has always thrown everything away, his life, his talents, all his
money and all of mine, for the sake of--throwing them away! Some other
must tell you about that room; but it has ruined my friend. Tonight I
discovered that he had been summoned here, and I made up my mind to come
and take him away. Your father has sworn to shoot me if I set foot in
his house or on ground of his. Well, my duty was clear and I came to
do it. And yet--I stopped at the foot of the stair--because--because
I remembered that you were Robert Carewe's daughter. What of you, if I
went up and harm came to me from your father? For I swear I would not
have touched him! You asked me not to speak of 'personal' things, and I
have obeyed you; but you see I must tell you one thing now: I have
cared for this friend of mine more than for all else under heaven, but I
turned and left him to his ruin, and would a thousand times, rather than
bring trouble upon you! 'A thousand times?' Ah! I swear it should be a
thousand times a thousand!"

He had paraded in one speech from the prisoner's dock to Capulet's
garden, and her eyes were shining into his like a great light when he
finished.

"Go quickly," she whispered. "Go quickly! Go quickly!"

"But do you unde