tar--I'll be watching near
by to come to your help in some way--but, whatever you do, don't let
Keenan suspect this!"

"You mean that we mustn't even look at each other?" she cried, in mock
dismay.

"Precisely," he continued.

"What if an officer should introduce you to me?" She laughed a little.

The untimeliness of her laughter disturbed him. More and more often,
during the last few weeks, he had beheld the signs of some callousing
and hardening process going on within her.

"Oh, in that case," he answered, "you'll find me very glum and
uncongenial. You'll probably be only too glad to leave me alone!"

She nodded her head in meditative assent. Her problem was a difficult
one.

"Jim," she said suddenly, "why should we play this waiting and
retreating game during the next two weeks? Here we have Keenan on
board, with nothing to interfere with our operations. Why can't we
work a little harder to win his confidence?"

"We?" asked the other.

"Well, why couldn't _I_? All along, during those days in Genoa, I had
the feeling that he would have believed in me, if some little outside
accident had only confirmed his faith in me. We can't tell, of course,
just what he found out after that Pobloff affair, or just how he
interpreted it, or whether he is as much in the dark as ever. If that
is the case, we may stand just where we were before with Keenan!"

"But I thought you wanted to get away from this sort of thing?"

"I do--when the time comes," she evaded, tortured by the thought that
she had withheld anything from him. "I do--but are we to let Keenan
go, when we have him so close to us?"

"Then go ahead and both capture and captivate him!" said Durkin, with a
voice that was gruff only because it was indifferent. Still again he
was oppressed by the feeling that she was passing beyond his power.

"But see, Jim--I'm getting so old and ugly!" And again she laughed,
with her own show of indifference, though her husband knew, by the
wistfulness of her face, that she was struggling to hold back some
deeper and stronger current of feeling. So he thrust his hands deep in
his pockets, and refused to meet her eyes for a second time.

"I don't see why we should be afraid of either Palermo or Gibraltar,"
Durkin went on at last, with a half-impatient business-is-business
glance about him. "Keenan is alone in this. He has no agents over
here, that we know of, and he daren't put anything in the hands of the
au