hunting through the streets for a house of whose location he was
utterly ignorant seemed nearly the culminating point.

"Yes, the height of folly," he said softly. "I must try and devise some
means of finding her. Chance may help me. I can do no more now."

He rose with the intention of going up to his bedroom, but the sun was
now shining brightly, and he opened the shutters before returning to his
seat to try and think out some clue which he could follow up.

The light which flooded the room seemed to brighten his intellect, and
in spite of the use to which he had put the latter part of the past
night, his head felt cool and clear.

"Let's look the position fairly in the face," he said to himself.
"After all, I have done Isabel no substantial wrong; I was not a free
agent. I could not return; and that course is open, to go to her and to
her people, frankly explain, and make up to her by my future for the
weak lapse of which I have been guilty. For what are these people to
me?"

He sat back with his brow knit, feeling, though, that such a course was
impossible--that he could not go and humble himself before his
betrothed, and that it would be an act of base and cruel hypocrisy to
resume their old relations when his heart seemed to have but one
desire--to see Marion again.

"No, it is impossible!" he cried angrily. "It was not love. I never
could have loved her. Heaven help me! What shall I do? Some clue--
some clue!"

He started mentally again from the moment when he was called down to see
his visitor, and he seemed to see her once more, standing close by the
table--just there! Then he once more entered the brougham with her and
tried to get some gleam of the direction they took, but he could only
recall that the horses were standing with their heads toward the east.
No more. The result was precisely the same as it had been at other
times, utterly negative. He had thought of nothing but his companion
till they reached the house, and he had not even the clue of the family
name.

Then a thought struck him, and he brightened up. Those moments when,
after his vain search for the bullet, he had dressed the wound. She had
prepared bandages for him, and with eager fingers now he thrust his hand
into his breast-pocket for his pocket-book, opened it, and took out a
closely-folded, very fine cambric handkerchief, deeply stained with
blood. She had given it to him, and he held it to the wound for a few
mi