firmly at last, her mind made up.

"It's too mad a risk. I was crazy to promise. I won't go!"

She had scarcely spoken her resolution when the soft call of the
auto-horn echoed below. She stood irresolute for a moment, and the call
was repeated in plaintive, appealing notes.

She tried to hold fast to her resolutions, but the impulse to open the
window and look out was resistless. She turned the old-fashioned brass
knob, swung her windows wide on their hinges and leaned out.

His keen eyes were watching. He lifted his cap and waved. She answered
with the flutter of her handkerchief--and all resolutions were off.

"Of course, I'll go," she cried, with a laugh. "It's a glorious day--I
may never have such a chance again."

CHAPTER V. WINGS OF STEEL

She threw on her furs and hurried downstairs. Her surrender was too
sudden to realize that she was being driven by a power that obscured
reason and crushed her will.

Reason made one more vain cry as she paused at the door below to draw on
her gloves.

"You have refused every invitation to see or know the unconventional
world into which thousands of women in New York, clear-eyed and
unafraid, enter daily. You'd sooner die than pose an hour in Gordon's
studio, and on a Sabbath morning you cut your church and go on a day's
wild ride with a man you have known but fifteen hours!"

And the voice inside quickly answered:

"But that's different! Gordon's a married man. My chevalier is not! I
have the right to go, and he has the right."

It was settled anyhow before this little controversy arose at the street
door, but the ready answer she gave eased her conscience and cleared the
way for a happy, exciting trip.

He leaped from the big, ugly racer to help her in, stopped and looked at
her light clothing.

"That's your heaviest coat?"

"Yes. It isn't cold."

"I've one for you."

He drew an enormous fur coat from the car and held it up for her arms.

"You think I'll need that?" she asked.

His white teeth gleamed in a friendly smile.

"Take it from me, Kiddo, you certainly will!"

She winced just a little at the common expression, but he said it with
such a quick, boyish enthusiasm, she wondered whether he were quoting
the expression from the Bowery boy's vocabulary or using it in a
facetious personal way.

"I knew you'd need it. So I brought it for you," he added genially.

"Thanks," she murmured, lifting her arms and drawing the coat about her
trim fig