esy, and would have blushed to fail in his devoirs to any
lady; but, in the other scale, he was a man averse from amorous
adventures. He looked east and west; but the houses that looked down
upon this interview remained inexorably shut; and he saw himself, though
in the full glare of the day's eye, cut off from any human intervention.
His looks returned at last upon the suppliant. He remarked with
irritation that she was charming both in face and figure, elegantly
dressed and gloved: a lady undeniable; the picture of distress and
innocence; weeping and lost in the city of diurnal sleep.

"Madam," he said, "I protest you have no cause to fear intrusion; and if
I have appeared to follow you, the fault is in this street, which has
deceived us both."

An unmistakable relief appeared upon the lady's face. "I might have
guessed it!" she exclaimed. "Thank you a thousand times! But at this
hour, in this appalling silence, and among all these staring windows, I
am lost in terrors--oh, lost in them!" she cried, her face blanching at
the words. "I beg you to lend me your arm," she added with the
loveliest, suppliant inflection. "I dare not go alone; my nerve is
gone--I had a shock, O what a shock! I beg of you to be my escort."

"My dear madam," responded Challoner heavily, "my arm is at your
service."

She took it and clung to it for a moment, struggling with her sobs; and
the next, with feverish hurry, began to lead him in the direction of the
city. One thing was plain, among so much that was obscure: it was plain
her fears were genuine. Still, as she went, she spied around as if for
dangers; and now she would shiver like a person in a chill, and now
clutch his arm in hers. To Challoner her terror was at once repugnant
and infectious; it gained and mastered, while it still offended him; and
he wailed in spirit and longed for release.

"Madam," he said at last, "I am, of course, charmed to be of use to any
lady; but I confess I was bound in a direction opposite to that you
follow, and a word of explanation----"

"Hush!" she sobbed, "not here--not here!"

The blood of Challoner ran cold. He might have thought the lady mad; but
his memory was charged with more perilous stuff; and in view of the
detonation, the smoke, and the flight of the ill-assorted trio, his mind
was lost among mysteries. So they continued to thread the maze of
streets in silence, with the speed of a guilty flight, and both
thrilling with incommunicable