smile.

"At last!" he hissed in the approved manner of melodrama, "we are
alone!"

She wasn't able to rise to his irresponsible humour. Thus far her
audacity seemed to have earned her nothing but his derision. He was
not in the least afraid of her--and _he_ was a desperate
criminal. Then what was she in his esteem?

Such thoughts drove home a fresh painful realisation of her ambiguous
personal status. It began to seem that she had been perhaps a little
hasty in assuming she was to be spared punishment for her sin, however
venial that might in charity be reckoned. Chance had, indeed, offered
what was apparently a broad and easy avenue of escape; but her own
voluntary folly has chosen the wrong turning.

Her hands were twisted tight together in her lap as she demanded with
tense directness:

"What have you done with them?"

He lifted the ironic eyebrow. "_Them?_"

"The jewels. I saw you steal them--watched you from the dining-room,
through the folding doors--"

"The deuce you did!"

"I saw you break open the desk--and everything."

"Well," he admitted fairly, "I'm jiggered!"

"What have you done with them?"

"Oh, the jewels?" he said with curious intonation. "Ah--yes, to be
sure; the jewels, of course. You're anxious to know what I've done
with them?"

"Oh, no," she countered irritably; "I only ask out of politeness."

"Thoughtful of you!" he laughed. "Why, they're outside, of course--in
my bag."

"Outside?"

"Didn't you notice? I checked it with my hat, rather than have a row.
I ought to be ashamed of myself, I know, but I'm a moral coward before
a coat-room attendant. I remember keeping tabs one summer, and--will
you believe me?--a common, ordinary, every-day three-dollar straw lid
set me back twenty-two dollars and thirty cents in tips. But I hope
I'm not boring you."

"Oh, how can you?" she protested, lips tremulous with indignation.

"Don't flatter; I bore even myself at times."

"I don't mean that, and you know I don't. How can you sit there joking
when you--when you've just--"

"Come off the job?" he caught her up as she faltered. "But why not? I
feel anything but sad about it. It was a good job--wasn't it?--a clean
haul, a clear getaway. Thanks, of course, to you."

She responded, not without some difficulty: "Please! I wouldn't have
dared if he hadn't tried to get at that sword."

"Just like him, too!" Blue Serge observed with a flash of indignation:
"his kind, I mean--less burglars