d gallantry forbids that I should tell you even now. But
would you rather elope against your will, or have your continued
existence made known to the world in general and the police in
particular? That is practically the problem which I have had to solve,
and the temporary solution was to fall ill. As a matter of fact, I am
ill; and now what do you think? I owe it to you to tell you, Bunny,
though it goes against the grain. She would take me 'to the dear, warm
underworld, where the sun really shines,' and she would 'nurse me back
to life and love!' The artistic temperament is a fearsome thing,
Bunny, in a woman with the devil's own will!"

Raffles tore up the letter from which he had read these piquant
extracts, and lay back on the pillows with the tired air of the
veritable invalid which he seemed able to assume at will. But for once
he did look as though bed was the best place for him; and I used the
fact as an argument for my own retention in defiance of Dr. Theobald.
The town was full of typhoid, I said, and certainly that autumnal
scourge was in the air. Did he want me to leave him at the very moment
when he might be sickening for a serious illness?

"You know I don't, my good fellow," said Raffles, wearily; "but
Theobald does, and I can't afford to go against him now. Not that I
really care what happens to me now that that woman knows I'm in the
land of the living; she'll let it out, to a dead certainty, and at the
best there'll be a hue and cry, which is the very thing I have escaped
all these years. Now, what I want you to do is to go and take some
quiet place somewhere, and then let me know, so that I may have a port
in the storm when it breaks."

"Now you're talking!" I cried, recovering my spirits. "I thought you
meant to go and drop a fellow altogether!"

"Exactly the sort of thing you would think," rejoined Raffles, with a
contempt that was welcome enough after my late alarm. "No, my dear
rabbit, what you've got to do is to make a new burrow for us both. Try
down the Thames, in some quiet nook that a literary man would naturally
select. I've often thought that more use might be made of a boat,
while the family are at dinner, than there ever has been yet. If
Raffles is to come to life, old chap, he shall go a-Raffling for all
he's worth! There's something to be done with a bicycle, too. Try Ham
Common or Roehampton, or some such sleepy hollow a trifle off the line;
and say you're e