t back and stood over her.

"Hilda you'd better think a while longer before you do that. I don't
know what I ought to say, but I don't believe you'd be happy; truly I
don't. Aren't you trying to frighten me?"

She tied the knot of the last lacing and put her boot-heel down firmly.
"No; I'm telling you what I've made up my mind to do. I suppose I
would better do it without telling you. But afterward I shan't have an
opportunity to explain, for I shan't be seeing you again."

Alexander started to speak, but caught himself. When Hilda rose he sat
down on the arm of her chair and drew her back into it.

"I wouldn't be so much alarmed if I didn't know how utterly reckless
you CAN be. Don't do anything like that rashly." His face grew troubled.
"You wouldn't be happy. You are not that kind of woman. I'd never have
another hour's peace if I helped to make you do a thing like that." He
took her face between his hands and looked down into it. "You see, you
are different, Hilda. Don't you know you are?" His voice grew softer,
his touch more and more tender. "Some women can do that sort of thing,
but you--you can love as queens did, in the old time."

Hilda had heard that soft, deep tone in his voice only once before. She
closed her eyes; her lips and eyelids trembled. "Only one, Bartley. Only
one. And he threw it back at me a second time."

She felt the strength leap in the arms that held her so lightly.

"Try him again, Hilda. Try him once again."

She looked up into his eyes, and hid her face in her hands.

CHAPTER X

On Tuesday afternoon a Boston lawyer, who had been trying a case in
Vermont, was standing on the siding at White River Junction when the
Canadian Express pulled by on its northward journey. As the day-coaches
at the rear end of the long train swept by him, the lawyer noticed at
one of the windows a man's head, with thick rumpled hair. "Curious," he
thought; "that looked like Alexander, but what would he be doing back
there in the daycoaches?"

It was, indeed, Alexander.

That morning a telegram from Moorlock had reached him, telling him that
there was serious trouble with the bridge and that he was needed there
at once, so he had caught the first train out of New York. He had taken
a seat in a day-coach to avoid the risk of meeting any one he knew, and
because he did not wish to be comfortable. When the telegram arrived,
Alexander was at his rooms on Tenth Street, packing his bag to go to
Bosto