e turned and said good-by, his voice trembled.

"I can't say thank you," he muttered, "but you know!"...

The lift was too slow for him. He opened his door with almost breathless
haste. He only paused to light a cigarette and change his coat and wheel
his table round so as to catch the afternoon light more perfectly. Then,
with his brain teeming with fancies, he plunged into his work.

CHAPTER XII

Philip let the pen slip at last from his tired fingers. The light had
failed. He had been writing with straining eyes, almost in the darkness.
But there was something else. Had it been fancy or ... This time there
could be no mistake. He had not heard the lift stop, but some one was
knocking softly at the door, softly but persistently. He turned his head.
The room seemed filled with shadows. He had written for hours, and he was
conscious that his limbs were stiff. The sun had gone down in a cloudy
sky, and the light had faded. He could scarcely distinguish the articles
of furniture at the further end of the room. For some reason or other he
felt tongue-tied. Then, without any answer from him to this mysterious
summons, the handle of the door slowly turned. As he sat there he saw it
pushed open. A woman, wrapped in a long coat, stepped inside, closing it
firmly behind her. She stood peering around the room. There was something
familiar and yet unfamiliar in her height, her carriage. He waited,
spellbound, for her voice.

"Douglas!" she exclaimed. "Ah, there you are!"

The words seemed to die away, unuttered, upon his lips. He suddenly
thought that he was choking. He stared at her blankly. It was impossible!
She came a step further into the room. Her hand was stretched out
accusingly.

"So I've found you, have I, Douglas?" she cried, and there was a note of
bitter triumph in her words, "found you after all these months! Aren't
you terrified? Aren't you afraid? No wonder you sit there, shrinking
away! Do you know what I have come for?"

He tried to speak, but his lips were as powerless to frame words as his
limbs were to respond to his desire for movement. This was the one thing
which he had not foreseen.

"You broke your promise," she went on, raising her voice a little in
passionate reproach. "You left me there alone to face dismissal, without
a penny, and slipped off yourself to America. You never even came in to
wish me good-by. Why? Tell me why you went without coming near me?... You
won't, eh? You daren't. Be