citous arms in dark cloth and metal buttons were
thrust out to support her. She thanked them, in her soft contralto,
gratefully. The drive through the open air, she assured them, would
restore her completely.

But all the while she was thinking how needlessly and blindly and
foolishly she had surrendered and lost a fortune. Her path of escape
had been an open one.

* * * * * *

"Won't they find out, and everything be known, before we can get to the
station?" she asked, as the fresh night air fanned her throbbing face
and brow.

"Of course they will!" said Durkin. "But we're not going to the
station. We're going to the waterfront, and from there out to our
steamer!"

"For where?" she asked.

"I scarcely know--but anywhere away from Genoa!"

CHAPTER XIV

AWAKENING VOICES

Frances Durkin's memory of that hurried flight from Genoa always
remained with her a confusion of incongruous and quickly changing
pictures. She had a recollection of stepping from her cab into a
crowded sailors' _cafe chantant_, of pushing past chairs and tables and
hurrying out through a side door, of a high wind tearing at her hair
and hat, as she and Durkin still hurried down narrow, stone-paved
streets, of catching the smell of salt water and the musky odor of
shipping, of a sharp altercation with an obdurate customs officer in
blue uniform and tall peaked cap, who stubbornly barred their way with
a bare and glittering bayonet against her husband's breast, while she
glibly and perseveringly lied to him, first in French, and then in
English, and then in Italian.

She remembered her sense of escape when he at last reluctantly allowed
them to pass, while they stumbled over railway tracks, and the rough
stones of the quay pavement, and the bundles of merchandise lying
scattered about them. Then she heard the impatient lapping of water,
and the outside roar of the waves, and saw the harbor lights twinkling
and dancing, and caught sight of the three great white shafts of light
that fingered so inquisitively and restlessly along the shipping and
the city front and the widening bay, as three great gloomy Italian
men-of-war played and swung their electric searchlights across the
night.

Then came a brief and passionate scene with a harbor ferryman, who
scorned the idea of taking his boat out in such a sea, who eloquently
waved his arms and told of accidents and deaths and disasters already
befallen