arkness like a sudden squaring of his
shoulders. "But first I want you to tell me your name."

"What a sudden descent from romance and poetry to mere stupid facts,"
hedged Peggy. "Think, in this atmosphere of royalties if it should be
Bridget, or, still more horrible, Mamie."

"Please," the voice persisted in its gravity, "we have been
fellow-prisoners, you know, and you should be kind."

Peggy told him with the full three-syllabled dignity of the "Margaret."

"Mine," he continued, "is John Barrett."

"Now," cried Peggy, "if this were a proper adventure we have reached the
place when I should be able to say, 'Why! not the Jack Barrett that
Brother Billy knew at Harvard?' Then you would cry, 'And this is my old
chum William's little sister Peggy that used to send him fudge!' and
then everything would be all right. But I haven't any brother at all,"
she finished regretfully.

"And Harvard wasn't my college," said her companion. "However," he went
on, "it would take more than the conventional backing of many brother
Billies to put me right with you after I've told you what I have to tell
you."

"Then don't do it," said Peggy softly.

"If I didn't know you'd find it out in a very few minutes I wouldn't,"
he confessed shamelessly. "But before I tell you I want you to know what
finding you here meant to me. You've got to realize the temptation
before you can understand the fall. You always got away from me, from
that first time in Liverpool----"

"Oh!" said Peggy with a gasp.

"And at Paris and at Calais when you smiled adorably at me----"

"I didn't" said Peggy, blushing in the darkness.

"When you didn't smile adorably at me, then," pursued the voice
relentlessly. "It was always the same. I found you and you were
gone--snatched away by an unkind fate in the form of your man from
Cook's. When you sailed away from me at Calais I was booked to leave
that same day from Antwerp, but I came on here after you instead. London
is small--the American tourist London, that is--the Abbey, the Museum,
the galleries, and the Tower, but I seemed to miss you everywhere. It
was fate again that sent me here to find you asleep in the corner."

"Now I know you are going to tell something very foolish," said Peggy
reflectively, "when people begin to talk about fate like that you always
find they are just trying to shift the responsibility."

"I want you to know it wasn't premeditated, however," pursued the voice.
"It wasn't till