.

"Both of us, or neither," I told him. "If you can help me make it both
by any ingenuity, I shall be mighty glad. It's a pleasant world! But we
will not talk any more of my running for New York like a kicked pup. The
question is, will you and Phillida take care of the lady who calls
herself Desire Michell, if tomorrow morning finds her free, but alone
and friendless?"

"As long as we live, Mr. Locke," he answered. "But I guess there isn't
any disgrace in your going to New York, running or not, if you take her
with you. And that is what ought to have been done long ago."

"Vere?"

He nodded.

"You've got me! Just pick the lady up, carry her out of that room, and
have a show-down. Put her in your car and take her to town."

"I gave her my word not----"

"People can't stand bowing to each other when the ship's afire. If she
is worth dying for, she doesn't want you to die for her."

The simplicity of it! And, leaping the breach of faith, the temptation!

What harm could I do Desire by this plan of Vere's? What good might I
not do her? Was it mere slavishness of mind on my part not to overrule
her timid will? She must pardon me when she realized my desperate case.
A dying man might be excused for some roughness of haste, surely.
Whether flight could save us I did not know. I did know absolutely that
my enemy had crossed the Barrier last night, and I was prey merely
withheld from It by the chance respite of a few daylight hours.

Suppose our escape succeeded? A whole troup of pictures flitted across
the screen of my fancy. Desire beside me in the city, my wife. Desire in
those delightful shops that make Fifth Avenue gay as a garden of tulips,
where I might buy for her frocks and hats, shoes of conspicuous
frivolity and those long white gloves that seem to caress a woman's
arm--everything fair and fine. Restaurants I had described for her,
where she might dine in silken ease and perhaps hear played the music
she had named----

I aroused myself and looked at Vere.

"You'll do it?" he translated my expression.

"I will, if she gives me the opportunity."

"Do you judge she will?"

"I hope so. Since she went so far as to show herself to you in order to
send help to me when I was in danger, I believe she will come to my room
tonight if I wait there----"

He looked at me silently. The consternation and protest in his face were
speech enough.

"If I wait there alone," I finished somewhat hurriedly. "If she com