ately, but did not understand, and at which my reason
mocked in vain.

And as I ran I thought I heard the patter of the dog's feet, pacing
mine.

I was rounding the corner of Tenth Street now, and again the folly of
my behaviour struck home to me. I stopped and tried to think. Was it
some instinct that was taking me back, or was it the remembrance of
Jacqueline's beauty? Was it not the desire to see her, to ask her
about the ring?

Surely my fears were but an overwrought imagination and the strangeness
of the situation, acting upon a mind eagerly grasping out after
adventure, being set free from the oppression of those dreadful years
of bondage!

I had actually swung around when I heard the ghostly patter of the feet
again close at my side. I made my decision in that instant, and
hurried swiftly on my course back toward the apartment house.

I was in Tenth Street now. It was half-past two in the morning, and
beginning to grow cold. The thoroughfare was empty. I fled, a tiny
thing, between two rows of high, dark houses.

When at last I found my door my hands were trembling so that I could
hardly fit the key into the lock.

I wondered now whether it had not been the pattering of my heart that I
had heard.

I bounded up the stairs. But on the top story I had to pause to get my
breath, and then I dared not enter. I listened outside. There was no
sound from within.

The two rooms that I occupied were separated only by a curtain, which
fell short a foot from the floor and was slung on a wooden pole,
disclosing two feet between the top of it and the ceiling. The rooms
were thus actually one, and even that might have been called small, for
the bed in the rear room was not a dozen paces from the door.

I listened for the breathing of the sleeping girl. My intelligence
cried out upon my folly, telling me that my appearance there would
terrify her; and yet that clamorous fear that beat at my heart would
not be silenced.

If I could hear her breathe, I thought, I would go quietly away, and
find a hotel in which to sleep. I listened minute after minute, but I
could not hear a sound.

At last I put my mouth to the keyhole and spoke to her. "Jacqueline,"
I called. The name sounded as strange and sweet on my own lips as it
had sounded on hers when she told it to me. I waited.

There was no answer.

Then a little louder: "Jacqueline!"

And then quite loudly: "Jacqueline!"

I listened, dreading that