n of a powerful and handsome young man
to Miss Yardwell.

"I am," Harold replied briefly.

"Take a seat--she will be here presently."

Harold took the offered seat with a sick, faint feeling at the pit of
his stomach. The long-hoped-for event was at hand. It seemed impossible
that Mary could be there--that she was about to stand before him. His
mind was filled with the things he had arranged to say to her, but they
were now in confused mass, circling and circling like the wrack of a
boat in a river's whirlpool.

He knew her far down the hall--he recognized the poise of her head and
her walk, which had always been very fine and dignified. As she
approached, the radiance of her dress, her beauty, scared him. She
looked at him once and then at the clerk as if to say, "Is this the
man?"

Then Harold arose and said, "Well, Mary, here I am."

For an instant she looked at him, and then a light leaped into her eyes.

"Why, Harold Excell!----" she stopped abruptly as he caught her
outstretched hands, and she remembered the sinister association of the
name. "Why, why, I didn't know you. Where do you come from?" Her face
was flushed, her eyes eager, searching, restless. "Come in here," she
said abruptly, and before he had time to reply, she led him to a little
anteroom with a cushioned wall seat, and they took seats side by side.

"It is impossible!" she said, still staring at him, her bosom pulsating
with her quickened breath. "It is not you--it can't be you," she
whispered, "Black Mose sitting here--with me--in Chicago. You're in
danger."

"I don't feel that way."

He smiled for the first time, and his fine teeth shining from his
handsome mouth led her to say:

"Your big mustaches are gone--that's the reason I didn't know you at
once--I don't believe I like you so well----"

"They'll grow again," he said; "I'm in disguise." He smiled again as if
in a joke.

Again the thought of who he really was flamed through her mind. "What a
life you lead! How do you happen to be here? I never expected to see you
in a city--you don't fit into a city."

"I'm here because you are," he replied, and the simplicity of his reply
moved her deeply. "I came as soon as I got your letter," he went on.

"My letter! I've written only one letter, that was soon after your visit
to Marmion."

"That's the one I mean. I got it nearly four years after you wrote it. I
hope you haven't changed since that letter."

"I'm older," she said evas